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THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 


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THE 

NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 


A  REJOINDER 


TO 


JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE'S 
«  MY  RELATIONS  WITH  CARLYLE  " 


BY 

ALEXANDER  CARLYLE,  B.  A. 

AND 

SIR  JAMES  CRICHTON-BROWNE,  M.D. 


JOHN  LANE:  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
MDCCCCIII 


Copyright,  1903,  by  John  Lank 


First  Edition,  October,  1903 


Set  up  by  The  Publishers'  Printing  Co. 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 

Printed  by  The  Caxton  Press 
New  York,  U.S.A. 


THE   NEMESIS  OF   FROUDE 


wtmsfti^wi* 


PREFACE 

IN  the  Prefatory  note  to  "My  Relations  with 
Carlyle,"  by  James  Anthony  Froude,  it  is  stated 
by  the  Editors,  Mr.  Ashley  A.  Froude  and  Miss 
Margaret  Froude,  that  it  would  never  have  been  given 
to  the  world  had  not  the  production  of  the  "  New 
Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,"  with 
the  serious  charges  contained  in  the  Introduction 
and  Foot-notes,  appeared  to  demand  its  publication. 
But  the  serious  charges  referred  to,  although  no 
doubt  rendered  more  serious  by  the  fresh  evidence 
in  their  support  brought  to  light  in  the  "  New  Letters 
and  Memorials" — evidence  which  Mr.  Froude  had 
suppressed — were  not  in  any  case  new  charges,  but 
the  mere  repetition  of  charges  which  were  first  made 
twenty  years  ago,  and  which  are  not  really  traversed 
by  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle."  Mr.  Froude  at- 
tempts to  explain  his  superabundant  verbal  inac- 
curacies, but  has  not  a  word  to  say  in  answer  to  the 
grave  charges  brought  against  him,  of  giving  garbled 
extracts  of  documents  and  omitting  of  set  purpose 
such  portions  of  them  as  did  not  fit  in  with  his  own 
views,  of  contravening  again  and  again  the  solemn 
injunctions  imposed  on  him  by  Carlyle,  of  making 
claims  to  advantages  to  which  he  was  not  entitled, 
of  refusing  to  implement  an  unconditional  promise, 
and  generally  of  producing  a  Biography  elaborated 

7 


PREFACE 

with  the  art  of  the  practised  romancer  in  which  the 
true  features  of  the  subject  can  scarcely  be  recog- 
nised, but  in  which  assertion  and  inference,  unsup- 
ported by  evidence,  are  palmed  off  for  correct  state- 
ment. On  all  these  points  he  has  allowed  judgment 
to  go  by  default.  His  defence  consists  in  the  accen- 
tuation of  what  he  had  already  said  derogatory  of 
Carlyle,  with  the  addition  of  fresh  charges  against 
him  of  a  very  odious  description,  which,  had  they 
been  true,  should  in  decency  have  been  kept  con- 
cealed, but  which,  being  groundless,  as  we  hope  to 
prove,  reflect  discredit  on  those  who  have  rashly,  or 
in  the  spirit  of  retaliation,  thrust  them  prominently 
forward.  That  Mr.  Froude  ever  decided  to  keep 
silence  on  these  charges  we  take  leave  to  doubt. 

As  early  as  1881  Mr.  Froude,  in  a  letter  which 
appeared  in  the  Times  of  May  6th,  alluded  to  reasons 
which  he  could  not  give  "without  entering  on  a 
subject  on  which  it  is  better  to  be  silent,"  and  added 
that  he  would  be  sorry  if  the  difficulty  of  his  task 
was  "  increased  by  a  demand  for  further  explanations 
which  I  shall  be  very  reluctant  to  give."  He  was 
at  once  challenged  by  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  in  the 
Times^  to  satisfy  the  curiosity  he  had  awakened  by 
his  reference  to  "  hidden  reasons  and  explanations." 
To  this  challenge  he  made  no  reply;  but  on  the 
20th  of  April,  1886,  when  he  heard  that  Professor 
Charles  Eliot  Norton  was  about  to  publish  the 
"  Early  Letters  of  Carlyle,"  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Alexan- 
der Carlyle,  drawing  attention  to  the  passage  in  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  Journal  relating  to  "  two  blue  marks  on  the 

wrist,"  and  hinting  that  this  secret  might  have  to 

8 


4J  ,0  «ii/^^(^  '<'«^  ****  ^  ^^  '^^  U.15w^t.v«^ 
H^^  cj  clu   cxv-  JuJ  ftftl'<u»  ewj>^«\«.  .%^</1 

UtA    Km,  l^ijbjiitj    Cf  <l£w^  1^  W"  btui^  ,    £j^   tl^a4  ^ 

FACSIMILE   OF   CARLYLe's    HANDWRITING   IN    I  832,    AT  THE   AGE   OF   37. 

See    «« Reminiscences,"    Norton's    Edition,    i.,    p.   5;    Froude's    Edition,    i.,    p.    8. 

See  also  Frontispiece. 


PREFACE 

be  revealed.  Again,  in  1896,  there  was  a  threat  to 
publish  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  merely  because 
Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle  had  requested  that  a  private 
letter  by  Mr.  Froude  to  Mr.  McPherson,  which  was 
published  in  his  short  Life  of  Carlyle,  should  not  be 
allowed  to  appear  in  a  second  edition,  lest  it  should 
involve  a  renewal  of  the  old  controversy  about  the 
papers.  On  this  occasion  Mr.  Leman,  Mr.  Ashley 
Froude's  solicitor,  wrote  as  follows:  "Mr.  Froude's 
representatives  have  no  desire  to  re-open  any  contro- 
versial questions  in  relation  to  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle, 
but  I  know  that  there  is  in  existence  a  Memorandum 
by  the  late  Mr.  Froude  written  in  anticipation  of  any 
further  controversy  on  the  lines  of  the  former  one 
(the  main  point  in  which  is  however  known  to  me 
and  I  believe  to  a  few  other  people),  which,  if  pub- 
lished, would  throw  perhaps  an  unexpected  light 
upon  the  whole  business,  and  materially  justify  what 
he  has  written  and  printed." 

It  is  clear  that  this  Memorandum,  which  was  found 
in  a  despatch-box  after  Mr.  Froude's  death,  but 
which,  it  is  said,  he  had  shown  to  no  one,  has  not 
been  kept  altogether  private  by  his  representatives, 
but  had  been  held  in  readiness  for  a  convenient 
moment  for  that  publication  which  Mr.  Froude,  not- 
withstanding his  alleged  decision  to  remain  silent, 
had  obviously  all  along  contemplated  and  intended. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  Memorandum  he  writes,  "  If 
I  have  now  told  all  it  is  because  I  see  that  nothing 
short  of  it  will  secure  me  the  fair  judgment  to  which 
I  am  entitled.  .  .  .  The  whole  facts  are  now  made 
known.  ...  I  have  nothing  more  to  reveal." 

9 


PREFACE 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  "My  Relations  with 
Carlyle  "  was  not  published  at  an  earlier  period,  for 
many  persons,  who  could  have  refuted  statements 
contained  in  it,  have  passed  away;  still,  even  now, 
Carlyle's  friends  rejoice  that  it  is  brought  forth,  so 
that  they  are  enabled  to  grapple  with  allegations 
against  him,  for  which  Mr.  Froude  has  made  himself 
responsible,  but  which  so  long  as  they  remained 
impalpable  rumours  it  was  impossible  for  them  to 
deal  with.  The  rumours  reflecting  on  Carlyle,  which 
can  be  now  traced  to  their  source,  at  first  mere 
gaseous  gossip,  have  become  gradually  congealed 
and  glued  to  his  name  with  many  offensive  accre- 
tions, and  there  are  certainly  multitudes  of  persons 
amongst  us  who  believe  that  he  was,  as  represented 
in  Mr.  Froude's  posthumous  Fragment,  a  man  of 
transcendant  ability,  but  selfish,  overbearing,  cruel, 
and  contemptible.  To  show,  as  we  hope  to  be  able 
to  do,  even  at  this  late  hour,  that  Mr.  Froude  was 
wrong — that  he  believed  a  myth,  betrayed  his  trust, 
and  must  himself  take  the  place  of  the  man  he  has 
so  unmercifully  pilloried,  will  supply  as  striking  an 
example  as  modern  literary  history  affords  of  what 
the  Greeks  called  "  Nemesis  "  and  Carlyle  the  "  Jus- 
tice of  God." 


10 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 


MR.  FROUDE'S  account  of  his  relations  with 
Carlyle,  found  written  in  pencil  in  a  note- 
book after  his  death,  was  prepared  while  he 
was  in  Cuba  in  1887,  and  he  had  not  therefore,  while 
writing  it,  access  to  the  correspondence  and  docu- 
ments bearing  on  the  matters  with  which  he  dealt. 
One  would  have  thought  that  in  composing  a  vindica- 
tion of  himself  in  connexion  with  his  discharge  of  a 
trust  which  he  was  accused  of  having  betrayed — a  vin- 
dication which  he  bequeathed  to  his  children  that  they 
might  have  something  to  rely  on  should  his  honour  or 
good  faith  be  assailed — he  would  have  desired  to  con- 
sult authorities  and  to  verify  every  statement  he  made ; 
but  that  was  not  Froude's  way  of  going  to  work.  In 
its  obituary  notice  of  him  the  Times  said :  "  He  was 
not  a  student,  in  the  real  sense  of  the  term ;  he  had 
neither  the  desire  to  probe  his  authorities  to  the 
bottom  nor  the  patience  to  do  so.  .  .  .  It  is  said  that 
at  the  time  when  Froude  was  busy  on  the  part  of  his 
history  where  Burleigh  plays  a  leading  part  he  was 
invited  to  stay  at  Hatfield  and  make  an  examination 
of  the  masses  of  Cecil  papers  there  preserved— at  a 
time,  it  must  be  remembered,  before  the  Historical 
Manuscripts  Commission  had  published  any  of  them 

— and  that  Froude  went,  and  stayed  one  day.  .  .  . 

II 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Scholars  who  read  his  brilHant  sketch  of  Caesar  can 
see  plainly  that  he  had  never  properly  read  Cicero's 
letters,  or  not  many  of  them.  When  he  visited  the 
West  Indies,  with  a  view  to  writing  his  'English  in 
the  West  Indies,'  he  preferred  to  sit  in  the  shade 
reading  Dante  rather  than  to  see  for  himself  the 
institutions  of  Jamaica,  about  which,  he  tok  s  host, 
he  knew  enough  already.  And,  most  not  rthy  of 
all,  though  he  visited  Simancas  and  stayed  ae  time 
there,  it  is  unquestionable  that  he  learnec  ompara- 
tively  little  about  the  records  there  preserved."  True 
to  his  usual  method,  in  writing  "  My  Relations  with 
Carlyle,"  Froude  disdained  the  assistance  of  records 
or  witnesses,  but  trusting  entirely  to  his  memory  and 
imagination,  in  the  intervals  of  his  study  of  Dante 
and  while  absorbing  the  history  and  institutions  of 
Cuba  at  the  pores,  produced  an  Apology  which  is 
itself  in  need  of  an  apologetic.  There  is  scarcely 
one  line  of  Froude's  pamphlet  that  does  not  require 
correction  or  qualification,  and  the  general  impres- 
sion it  creates  is  as  wide  of  the  truth  as  it  is  possible 
to  be.  A  paragon  of  errors,  Froude  has  never  shown 
himself  more  inaccurate.  Never  has  his  treacherous 
memory  more  signally  beguiled  him  or  more  indubi- 
tably proved  itself  to  have  been  an  organ,  not  for 
retention  and  reproduction,  but  for  transformation. 
It  did  not,  like  other  men's  memories,  yield  up  what 
it  had  appropriated,  but  a  special  secretion  of  its 
own.  In  Carlyle's  case  it  was  supplied  with  heart's 
blood  and  has  given  out  bile.  The  honoured  master, 
the  old  familiar  friend  has  been  converted  into  a 
grotesque    monster   compounded  of    strength  and 

12 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

weakness,  dignity  and  deformity.  The  pamphlet  is 
made  up  of  the  writhings  of  wounded  egotism  and 
of  virulent  attacks  on  the  character  and  conduct  of 
the  man2  whom  he  had  extolled  as  a  great  spiritual 
teacher,  j  Having  first  assassinated  the  reputation  of 
Carlyle,  Froude  now  mutilates  the  remains.  What- 
ever n/-  Hts  his  Life  of  Carlyle  possessed — and  no 
one  dt  f^s  it  some  merits — are  now  destroyed  by 
this  poi  jmous  pamphlet.  Having  drawn  a  portrait 
of  Cari:^  k  possessing  at  least  some  more  or  less 
distant  resemblance,  he  has  deliberately  thrown  a 
pailful  o£  liquid  lampblack  over  it  and  rendered  it 
irrecognisable  as  the  portrait  of  anything  human. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Froude's  paper,  "My 
Relations  with  Carlyle,"  has  not  been  published 
exactly  as  it  was  found  in  the  despatch-box  after  his 
death.  The  first  few  pages  have  been  withheld, 
because  they  are  "of  too  intimate  a  nature  to  be 
given  to  the  public  "  ;  but  that  may  be  truly  said  of 
the  whole  essay,  and  it  is  clear  that  Froude  himself 
had  drawn  no  distinction  of  this  kind,  but  had  antici- 
pated that  all  of  what  he  had  written  would  be  pub- 
lished. It  may  be  assumed  that  the  omitted  pages 
would  not  in  any  way  have  strengthened  his  case 
against  Carlyle,  but  they  might  have  supplied  the 
means  of  testing  the  fidelity  of  his  narrative  in  mat- 
ters of  great  personal  moment,  in  respect  of  which, 
even  a  recreant  memory  rarely  goes  astray.  The 
epitome  of  some  of  the  omitted  matter  given  as  an 
introduction  to  the  essay  undoubtedly  suggests  that, 
in  the  interests  of  veracity,  omission  was  advisable. 
It  is  the  object  of  this  epitome  to  show  that  Froude 

13 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

could  have  no  earthly  motive  to  misrepresent  Carlyle, 
to  whom  the  crisis  of  his  life  was  due  and  in  submis- 
sion to  whose  teachings  he  had  made  great  personal 
sacrifices.  But  the  facts  quoted  in  support  of  this 
contention  will  not  bear  critical  examination.  "  He 
(Froude)  had  taken  deacon's  orders,  and  looked  to 
the  Church  as  his  regular  profession.  So  much  as  a 
doubt,"  he  tells  us,  "had  so  far  never  crossed  his 
mind,  of  the  truth  of  the  creed  in  which  he  had  been 
brought  up."  "  It  was  at  this  time,"  he  says,  "  that 
Carlyle's  books  came  in  my  way.  They  produced  on 
me  what  Evangelicals  call  *a  conviction  of  sin.'  .  .  . 
They  taught  me  that  the  religion  in  which  I  had 
been  reared  was  but  one  of  many  dresses  in  which 
spiritual  truth  had  arrayed  itself,  and  that  the  creed 
was  not  literally  true  so  far  as  it  was  a  narrative  of 
facts."  It  seems  a  pity  to  have  to  overthrow  such 
a  moving  little  bit  of  autobiography,  but  the  tyr- 
anny of  dates  makes  it  untenable.  It  was  in  1841, 
at  Falmouth,  that  Carlyle's  books  first  came  in 
Froude 's  way,  when  they  were  brought  to  his  notice 
by  John  Sterling,  and  at  once  arrested  his  attention, 
and  it  was  not  until  1844  that  he  took  deacon's 
orders.  He  has  himself  told  us  in  "  The  Nemesis  of 
Faith,"  that  it  was  the  "  French  Revolution,"  which 
he  read  in  1841,  that  first  stirred  his  conscience,  so 
the  alternatives  are  these :  either  he  is  wrong  in  say- 
ing that  it  was  Carlyle's  books  that  undermined  and 
overthrew  his  faith,  or  he  took  deacon's  orders  after 
his  faith  was  disintegrated,  and  went  on  assuming 
faith  when  he  had  it  not,  for  he  preached  a  funeral 
sermon  in  St.  Mary's  Church,  Torquay,  in  1847. 

14 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

For  the  purposes  of  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  " 
Froude  has  clearly  exaggerated  Carlyle's  early  influ- 
ence over  him.  He  would  have  us  believe  that  it 
was  this  influence  which  led  him  to  give  up  his 
fellowship  and  abandon  his  orders,  and  which  changed 
the  whole  current  of  his  life,  but  it  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  show  that  many  other  influences  contributed  to 
shape  his  career.  When  he  tells  us  now,  that  it  was 
Carlyle's  writings  which  first  made  him  "  realise  the 
meaning  of  duty  and  the  overpowering  obligation  to 
do  it,"  we  must  remember  that  he  wrote  to  Hallam, 
Lord  Tennyson,  "  I  owe  to  your  father  the  first 
serious  reflexions  upon  life  and  the  nature  of  it." 
When  he  tells  us  now,  that  it  was  Carlyle's  writings 
that  deprived  him  of  belief  in  the  facts  of  his  creed, 
we  must  remember  that  he  has  previously  stated  that 
it  was  his  studies  for  the  Life  of  St.  Neot,  which 
Newman  had  invited  him  to  write,  that  put  the 
breaking  strain  on  his  credulity.  Goethe,  Lessing, 
Neander,  Schleiermacher,  the  Tractarians  and  the 
Evangelicals  had  all  a  hand  in  the  making  of  Froude, 
whose  views  underwent  a  gradual  development.  Not 
till  long  after  he  had  definitely  left  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant,  could  he  find  a  twig  on  which  to  settle. 
Carlyle's  doctrine  ultimately  obtained  the  ascendency 
in  his  mind,  but  his  personal  influence  was  not 
brought  to  bear  on  him  until  1849,  when  he  was 
introduced  by  Spedding,  not  perhaps  until  i860  when 
he  settled  in  London  and  was  admitted  on  friendly 
terms  to  the  circle  at  Cheyne  Row. 

In  the  first  instance  Froude,  according  to  his  own 
account,  was  repelled  by  Carlyle's  objurgations  and 

15 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

demeanour.  "  He  denounced  everybody  and  every- 
thing!" and  although  Froude  was  of  opinion,  being 
then  apparently  in  a  damnatory  mood,  that  this 
wholesale  denunciation  "was  intensely  true  and 
right,"  he  felt  "  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  live 
with  him  on  equal  terms."  Carlyle,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  have  been  powerfully  attracted  to  Froude, 
for,  contrary  to  what  was  ever  known  of  him  in  any 
other  case,  he  forced  his  acquaintance  upon  him :  so 
Froude  tells  us.  He  called  on  him,  wished  to  see 
more  of  him  and  invited  him  to  be  his  companion  in 
his  walks  and  rides ;  and  as  it  would  have  been  ungra- 
cious to  reject  such  advances,  Froude  grasped  the 
proffered  hand  and  was  placed  on  a  friendly  footing 
in  Carlyle's  home,  where  he  seems  to  have  begun  at 
once  to  make  those  unfavourable  observations  which 
have  dimmed  and  defaced  his  Biography  of  his  host, 
and  which  are  marshalled  with  relentless  candour  in 
his  posthumous  pamphlet. 

That  Froude  himself  frequently  begged  to  be 
admitted  to  the  Cheyne  Row  household  is  /bertain. 
Mrs.  Carlyle  has  placed  a  photograph  of  him  in  her 
album,  and  pasted  underneath  it  a  characteristic  cut- 
ting from  a  letter  in  Froude's  handwriting  which 
reads,  "  May  I  come  to  tea  on  Friday? "  Introduced 
into  closer  relations  with  the  life  at  Cheyne  Row  he 
could  not  help  becoming  acquainted,  he  tells  us,  with 
many  things  which  he  would  rather  not  have  known, 
but  which  he  has  carefully  treasured  up  against  the 
day  of  wrath. 

First  of   all   it  was  borne   in   upon  Froude  that 

Carlyle  had  an  ungovernable  temper  which  caused 

i6 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

much  domestic  unhappiness.  "  Rumour  said,  that 
she  [Mrs.  Carlyle]  and  Carlyle  quarrelled  often,  and  I 
could  easily  believe  it,"  he  added,  "  from  occasional 
expressions  about  him  which  fell  from  her."  Farther 
on  he  states  explicitly  that  they  quarrelled  fiercely 
and  violently,  and  by  various  allusions  throughout 
his  paper  he  seeks  to  convey  the  idea  that  they  lived 
a  cat-and-dog  life,  owing  mainly  to  Carlyle's  frac- 
tious, impatient  and  selfish  disposition.  "In  Car- 
lyle's catalogue  of  his  own  duties  self-restraint  seemed 
to  be  forgotten."  But  Froude  and  rumour  cannot 
on  this  question  stand  against  the  phalanx  of  wit- 
nesses on  the  other  side.  Almost  without  exception, 
the  other  intimates  of  the  household  at  Cheyne 
Row,  who  had  as  good  opportunities  of  judging  as 
Froude  and  perhaps  more  discernment  than  he,  take 
a  directly  opposite  view  and  testify  to  the  generally 
amiable  terms  on  which  Carlyle  and  his  wife  jogged 
along  together.  Moncure  Conway  observed  that 
"when  Carlyle's  mood  was  stormiest, her  voice  could 
in  an  instant  allay  it:  the  lion  was  led  as  by  a  little 
child."  "  In  the  conversation  which  went  on  in  the 
old  drawing-room  at  Chelsea,  there  was  no  sugges- 
tion of  things  secret  or  reserved ;  people  with  sensi- 
tive toes  had  no  careful  provision  made  for  them, 
and  had  best  keep  away;  free,  frank  and  simple 
speech  and  intercourse  were  the  unwritten  but  ever- 
present  law.  Mrs.  Carlyle's  wit  and  humour  were 
overflowing,  and  she  told  anecdotes  about  her  hus- 
band under  which  he  sat  with  a  patient  look  of  re- 
pudiation, until  the  loud  laugh  broke  out  and  led 
the  chorus."     Emerson  wrote  in  his  Diary,  "  Carlyle 

2  17 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

and  his  wife  live  on  beautiful  terms.  Their  ways  are 
very  engaging  and  in  her  book-case  all  his  books  are 
inscribed  to  her  as  they  come  from  year  to  year,  each 
with  some  significant  lines."  Professor  Masson 
placed  on  record  that,  "  One  of  the  pleasantest  sights 
in  the  Cheyne  Row  household,  on  a  winter  evening, 
was  Carlyle  himself,  seated  in  a  chair  by  the  fire,  or 
reclining  on  the  hearth-rug,  pipe  in  mouth,  listening 
benignantly  and  admiringly  to  those  caricatures  of 
his  ways,  and  illustrations  of  his  recent  misbehaviours, 
from  his  beloved  Jane's  lips.  Insufficient  apprecia- 
tion of  the  amount  of  consciously  humorous,  and 
mutually  admiring  give-and-take  of  this  kind  in  the 
married  life  of  the  extraordinary  pair,  both  of  them 
so  sensitively  organised,  has  had  much  to  do,  it 
seems  to  me,  with  that  elaborately  studied  contrast 
of  them  which  Mr.  Froude  has  succeeded  in  impress- 
ing on  the  public."  "  The  notion  of  Carlyle,"  says 
Masson,  referring  to  Froude's  portrait  of  him,  "  as  in 
any  sense  a  misanthrope,  a  hard-hearted  man,  a  mere 
raging  or  railing  egotist,  is  one  of  those  absurdities, 
those  perversions  of  the  actual  truth  into  its  very 
opposite,  which  arise  not  from  mere  insufficiency  of 
knowledge,  but  from  a  moral  incapacity  of  under- 
standing anything  unusually  complex  in  character, 
and  a  malevolent  predetermination  to  resist  evi- 
dence." And  yet,  once  at  any  rate,  Froude  himself 
seems  to  have  had  some  inkling  of  the  truth  which 
Masson  insists  on,  for  in  one  place  in  the  "  Life  of  Car- 
lyle "  he  speaks  of  Mrs.  Carlyle  "  telling  stories  at  her 
husband's  expense,  at  which  he  laughed  himself  as 

heartily  as  we  did  " — a  behaviour  on  her  part  some- 

i8 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

what  difficult  to  reconcile  with  her  condition  as 
depicted  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  as  a  poor, 
dejected,  down-trodden  woman,  whose  "  pale,  drawn, 
suffering  face"  haunted  Froude  in  his  dreams.  It 
was  "exquisitely  painful,"  he  says,  to  see  this  be- 
witching woman  suffering  through  her  husband's 
neglect  and  violence. 

Amongst  others  who  have  borne  generous  testi- 
mony to  the  cordial  and  affectionate  terms  on  which 
the  Carlyles  lived  may  be  named  Tennyson,  G.  S. 
Venables,  Mrs.  Oliphant,  John  Tyndall,  Sir  Charles 
Gavan  Duffy  and  A.J.Symington;  but  their  testi- 
mony, strong  and  weighty  as  it  is,  and  that  of  a  host 
of  other  responsible  witnesses  who  might  be  sum- 
moned, cannot  elucidate  the  true  conjugal  relations 
of  Carlyle  and  his  wife  half  as  clearly  and  convinc- 
ingly as  the  letters  which  they  wrote  to  each  other, 
during  the  forty  years  of  their  wedded  life.  Enough 
of  these  have  been  already  published  to  put  it  beyond 
a  shadow  of  a  doubt  that,  from  their  first  acquaintance 
to  the  end  of  their  days,  they  were  united  by  almost 
unbroken  trust  and  love  which  only  deepened  as  the 
end  drew  near.  Conscious  that  these  letters,  if 
referred  to,  must  reveal  the  hollow  mockery  of  the 
grim  Cheyne  Row  tragedy  he  had  set  himself  to 
compose,  Froude  attempts  to  discredit  them,  by 
quoting  Mrs.  Carlyle  as  saying  that  her  husband's 
letters  were  written  for  his  biographer.  Where  did 
she  say  so  ?  Not  in  her  replies  to  these  letters,  which 
are  full  of  grateful  acknowledgment  and  sympathetic 
response.  The  remark,  it  is  to  be  suggested,  must 
have  been  made  in  one  of  Froude's  imaginary  con- 

19 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

versations  with  her,  or  if  it  did  actually  fall  from 
her  lips,  it  must  have  been  ironical,  for  the  letters, 
as  she  well  knew,  came  from  the  fulness  of  the 
writer's  heart,  and  were  meant  for  no  eye  but  hers. 
We  have  Froude's  authority  for  it,  that  until  long 
after  his  wife's  death  Carlyle  was  resolved  that  no 
express  biography  of  him  should  be  written ;  and  here 
we  have  the  man  who  tells  us  that  the  task  of  biogra- 
phy was  ultimately  confided  to  him,  insinuating  that 
Carlyle  in  his  familiar  correspondence  with  his  wife, 
while  denouncing  "  the  brute  of  a  world,"  was  posing 
for  future  generations.  But  Mrs.  Carlyle's  letters, 
the  sincerity  and  spontaneity  of  which  Froude  would 
be  the  last  to  impugn,  even  more  strikingly  than  her 
husband's,  bring  out  that  their  matrimonial  pathway, 
if  not  all  strewn  with  flowers  and  free  from  rough 
places,  was  on  the  wdiole  felicitous,  and  that  they 
never  parted  hands  while  journeying  along  it.  They 
had  their  little  differences  and  misunderstandings 
and  sometimes  sharp  encounters.  What  married 
pair  has  not  ?  What  man  of  genius  and  his  wife  ever 
escaped  them?  Who  has  proposed  a  competition 
for  the  Dunmow  Flitch  after  forty  years  of  wedlock? 
Mrs.  Carlyle  was  prone  to  take  offence  and  could 
speak  daggers.  Carlyle,  as  he  said  of  his  wife's 
grandfather,  had  a  hot,  impatient  temper,  break- 
ing out  into  fierce  flashes  as  of  lightning,  if  you 
touched  him  the  wrong  way,  but  they  were  flashes 
only,  never  bolts.  But  on  the  whole  they  were  happy 
and  contented  with  each  other,  and  it  is  impossible 
now  to  determine  which  was  more  to  blame  for  any 
disagreements   that  varied   the  monotony  of  their 

20 


{ 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

existence.  Carlyle  has  chivalrously  taken  most  of 
the  blame  for  these  on  himself,  but  hear  what  Jane 
says  referring  to  one  little  quarrel  that  occurred  on 
one  occasion  between  them.  "Nothing  less  than 
a  devil  (I  am  sure)  could  have  tempted  me  to  tor- 
ment you  and  myself  as  I  did  that  unblessed  day. 
Woe  to  me,  then,  if  I  had  had  any  other  than 
the  most  constant  and  generous  of  mortal  men  to 
deal  with.  Blessings  on  your  equanimity  and  mag- 
nanimity." Even  the  idolatrous  Miss  Jewsbury  ad- 
mits that  Jane  was  provoking;  and  this  is  certain, 
that  she  was  very  well  able  to  take  care  of  her- 
self, and  that  Froude's  vision  of  her  as  the  sweet, 
forlorn,  submissive  spouse  of  an  irritable,  inconsid- 
erate and  violent  husband,  is  either  the  illusion  of 
an  exuberant  imagination  or  the  creation  of  a  ma- 
licious caricaturist.  Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald  says:  "I 
used  often  of  a  Sunday  to  go  and  talk  with  the  late 
Mrs.  Forster,  who  was  a  shrewd  and  very  observ- 
ant lady.  She  met  all  her  husband's  many  friends 
and  knew  a  great  deal.  I  remember  her  talking 
much  of  the  Carlyles  and  their  mhiage,  and  once  I 
said — albeit  a  friend  and  admirer  of  Thomas — that 
she  must  have  had  a  rough  time.  Mrs.  Forster 
smiled,  and  said,  'Don't  you  believe  all  that!  She 
was  rather  an  actress,  and  liked  to  pose  as  a  martyr, 
talking  of  her  sufferings  and  getting  sympathy.  I 
assure  you  he  was  the  great  sufferer.' "  Lady  East- 
lake  wrote  in  her  "  Letters  and  Memorials,"  "  Mrs. 
Carlyle  interested  me ;  she  is  lively  and  clever,  and 
evidently  very  happy." 

In  view  of  what  Froude  tells  us  as  to  the  "  Niagaras 

21 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

of  scorn  and  vituperation  "  which  Carlyle  poured  out 
for  hours  together  in  his  wife's  presence,  one  would 
have  thought  that  it  would  have  been  a  relief  to  her 
to  be  left  alone  and  that  she  must  have  thanked 
Heaven  when  her  husband  shut  himself  up  in  his 
sound-proof  room.  But  not  at  all.  Froude  will  not 
have  it  so.  This  was  an  additional  grievance.  "  She 
was  very  much  alone."  Carlyle,  whom  Froude  is 
now,  with  tears  in  his  eyes  and  a  tremor  in  his  voice, 
unveiling  to  us  as  the  thoroughly  bad  man  he  was, 
was  not  only  violent  to  his  wife  but  neglectful  of  her. 
He  was  engrossed  in  his  own  pursuits,  "  she  rarely 
saw  him,  except  at  meal-times.  She  sat  by  herself  in 
her  drawing-room,  either  reading  or  entertaining 
visitors  who  bored  her  and  of  whom  she  dared 
not  ask  him  to  relieve  her."  She  was  a  sad,  soli- 
tary, stricken  woman;  the  glaring  absurdity  of  all 
which,  may  perhaps  be  best  demonstrated  by  re- 
counting the  ordinary  routine  of  daily  life  at  Cheyne 
Row. 

Carlyle  rose  at  7.30,  had  his  bath  and  went  out  for 
a  short  walk.  He  breakfasted  about  9,  and  after 
smoking  a  pipe,  reading  the  newspaper  (when  he 
took  one  in,  which  was  not  always),  and  conversing 
with  his  wife,  he  retired  to  his  study.  When  he  was 
engaged  in  writing  anything,  he  worked  steadily  till 
I  or  1.30,  when  he  had  his  luncheon  while  Mrs. 
Carlyle  dined,  his  luncheon  being  light  and  consist- 
ing generally  of  a  cup  of  beef-tea  or  a  biscuit  and  a 
glass  of  sherry.  Then  he  went  out  walking,  accom- 
panied by  his  wife  when  she   was  able  to  walk. 

When  he  had  a  horse,  he  rode  for  two  hours  in  the 

22 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

afternoon,  getting  in  an  hour  before  dinner  which 
was  generally  at  5  or  6,  but  the  hour  was  frequently 
changed.  Before  dinner  he  was  joined  by  Mrs. 
Carlyle,  who  talked  to  him  and  told  him  the  news  of 
the  day  while  he  was  dining  and  while  he  lay  on  the 
sofa,  when  the  meal  was  over.  After  dinner,  when 
they  were  not  invited  out,  they  spent  the  whole  even- 
ing together,  reading  or  chatting  with  any  guests  who 
chanced  to  call.  This  was  the  general  routine,  but 
when  he  was  not  engaged  in  any  special  task,  Carlyle 
rarely  retired  to  his  study,  but  read  beside  his  wife. 
And  sometimes  even  when  he  was  writing  she  was 
his  companion.  He  says :  "  Wife  and  I  sat  together 
in  the  library-room,  as  the  warmest,  all  the  time  I 
was  writing  'Scott.'" 

Now,  is  it  not  apparent  that  Froude  has  again 
attempted  to  mislead  his  readers  in  representing 
Mrs.  Carlyle  as  being  left  much  alone  by  a  callous 
husband,  careful  about  his  own  interests  and  nought 
else,  and  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  she  had  more  of  her 
husband's  society  than  married  ladies  of  a  certain 
age  generally  have?  Beyond  the  riding  exercise, 
which  he  took  with  a  view  to  the  maintenance  of 
his  working  power,  on  which  his  bread  depended, 
Carlyle  had  no  pursuits  or  amusements  apart  from 
his  home.  He  was  not  a  club-man  or  sportsman  or 
billiard-player.  He  spent  his  leisure  at  his  own  fire- 
side with  his  wife  and  friends  and  it  was  his  wife's 
own  choice  if  she  did  not  accompany  him  on  his  very 
occasional  excursions  into  society  at  Bath  House  or 
Addiscombe.  His  visits  to  Scotland  were  made  that 
he  might  see  his  kindred  or  recover  his  health,  and 

23 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

during  them  he  wrote  to  his  wife  daily,  not  laconic 
notes,  but  richly  effusive  letters,  which  she  so  hun- 
gered for,  that  she  had  an  hysterical  attack  if  the  post 
failed  to  bring  one.  What  modern  husband  does  as 
much?  How  many  twentieth-century  wives  can 
boast  of  as  much  uxorial  devotion  ? 

Mrs.  Carlyle  was  no  Mariana  in  a  Moated  Grange, 
dreary  and  deserted,  but  a  highly  appreciated  wife, 
whose  complaint  was  that  she  had  too  much  and  not 
too  little  society.  "So  long  as  I  am  in  what  the 
French  call 'my  room  of  reception,'"  she  says,  "it 
never  occurs  to  me  to  feel  lonely."  "  It  is  odd,"  she 
remarks,  in  another  place,  "  what  notions  men  have 
of  the  scantiness  of  a  woman's  resources.  They  do 
not  find  it  anything  out  of  nature  that  they  should 
exist  by  themselves,  but  a  woman  must  always  be 
borne  about  on  somebody's  shoulders,  and  dandled 
or  chirped  to,  or  it  is  supposed  she  will  fall  into  the 
blackest  melancholy."  "  I  have  as  much  society  as 
I  like,  but  I  prefer  none  when  I  am  ill." 

But  Mrs.  Carlyle  had  other  interests  and  enjoy- 
ments beyond  those  which  society  afforded.  She 
keenly  relished  the  management  of  her  little  house- 
hold and  the  conquest  of  those  practical  problems 
which,  for  many  years,  their  limited  means  made 
difficult  of  solution.  She  had  been  brought  up  to 
take  part  in  household  work ;  she  revelled  in  economic 
contrivances,  and  even  her  "  earthquakes  "  or  annual 
cleanings  brought  her  a  grim  satisfaction.  But  here 
again  the  lugubrious  Froude  shakes  his  head.  She 
was  "  a  household  drudge,"  quoth  he,  and  in  saying 

that  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle "  he  is  merely 

24 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

disinterring  those  old  misinterpretations  of  his  which 
were  killed  and  buried  long  ago. 

It  was  in  connection  with  the  life  at  Craigenputtock 
that  Froude  first  made  this  charge.  He  depicted 
that  as  one  round  of  menial  drudgery  for  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
unsolaced  by  more  than  an  occasional  word  of 
encouragement,  sympathy,  or  compassion  from  her 
husband.  "  Every  household  duty  fell  upon  her, 
either  directly,  or  in  supplying  the  shortcomings  of  a 
Scotch  maid-of-all-work.  She  had  to  cook,  to  sew,  to 
scour,  to  clean;  to  gallop  down  alone  to  Dumfries 
if  anything  was  wanted ;  to  keep  the  house,  and  even 
on  occasions  to  milk  the  cows."  The  story  of  the 
hard  time  this  poor  woman  had  to  pass  at  Craigen- 
puttock, Froude  derived  from  Miss  Geraldine  Jews- 
bury's  recollection,  and  he  had  the  effrontery  to  ad- 
here to  it  and  to  introduce  it  into  the  "  Early  Life  " 
after  he  had  himself  published  Carlyle's  denial  of  it, 
generally  and  in  detail. 

"  Geraldine's  Craigenputtock  stories,"  Carlyle  wrote, 
"  are  more  mythical  than  any  of  the  rest.  Each  con- 
sists of  two  or  three  in  confused  exaggerated  state 
rolled  with  new  confusion  into  one,"  and  then  he 
goes  on  to  show  that  his  wife's  participation  in  any 
of  the  menial  occupations  enumerated  by  Froude 
must  have  had  a  spice  of  frolic  or  adventure  in  it,  as 
there  were  a  servant  and  milk-maid  and  farm  men  at 
call,  zealous  to  help  the  young  couple.  He  states 
explicitly  that  the  happiest  and  wholesomest  days  of 
their  married  life  were  these  seven  years  spent  at 
Craigenputtock,  where  his  helpmate  made  the  desert 
blossom  and  converted  into  a  fairy  palace  "  the  wild 

25 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

moorland  home  of  the  poor  man."  And  in  all  this 
he  is  fully  borne  out  by  the  testimony  of  that  help- 
mate herself.  Her  letters,  dated  from  Craigenput- 
tock,  are  bright  as  the  unpolluted  sunshine  on  the 
mountain,  breezy  as  the  atmosphere  that  undulated 
around  her ;  lucent  and  hopefully  babbling  like  the 
streams  that  hurried  to  the  valley  below.  And  more 
than  that,  they  teem  with  expressions  of  joyous 
satisfaction  with  her  lot,  and  contain  direct  contra- 
dictions of  every  one  of  Froude's  allegations.  To 
"  this  dreariest  spot  in  all  the  British  dominions,"  as 
Froude,  with  pitiable  topographical  insensibility,  de- 
scribed it,  she  was  glad  to  return  from  Edinburgh  and 
from  Templand  when  visiting  her  mother;  and  from 
it,  after  four  years'  experience  of  it,  she  wrote  to  Miss 
Eliza  Miles,  "  For  my  part  I  am  very  content.  I 
have  everything  here  my  heart  desires  that  I  could 
have  anywhere  else,  except  society,  and  even  that 
deprivation  is  not  wholly  an  evil.  .  .  .  My  husband 
is  as  good  company  as  reasonable  mortal  could  desire. 
Every  fair  morning  we  ride  on  horseback  for  an  hour 
before  breakfast.  .  .  .  Then  we  eat  such  a  surprising 
breakfast  of  home-baked  bread  and  eggs,  &c.,  &c.,  as 
might  incite  anyone  that  had  breakfasted  so  long  in 
London  to  write  a  pastoral.  Then  Carlyle  takes  to 
his  writing,  while  I,  like  Eve,  'studious  of  household 
good,'  inspect  my  house,  my  garden,  my  live  stock, 
gather  flowers  for  my  drawing-room,  and  lapfuls  of 
eggs,  and  finally  betake  myself  also  to  writing  or  read- 
ing, or  mending,  or  whatever  work  seems  fittest. 
After  dinner,  and  only  then,  I  lie  on  the  sofa,  and  (to 

my  shame  be  it  spoken)  sometimes  sleep,  but  of  tenest 

26 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

dream  waking".  ...  In  the  evening  I  walk  on  the 
moor  and  read.  Such  is  my  life."  And  one  is 
tempted  to  ask  what  was  wrong  with  it,  in  the  case  of 
a  young  Scotchwoman,  reared  in  the  frugal  home  of 
a  country  doctor,  whose  husband  was  earning  his 
living  by  his  pen,  and,  as  she  even  then  knew,  laying 
the  foundation  of  a  great  reputation  ? 

To  Miss  Stodart  Mrs.  Carlyle  wrote:  "Indeed, 
Craigenputtock  is  no  such  frightful  place  as  the 
people  call  it.  ...  I  read  and  work  and  talk  with 
my  husband  and  am  never  weary.  I  ride  over  to 
Templand  [to  see  her  mother].  Grace  Macdonald 
[that  is  Froude's  Scotch  maid-of-all-work  with  her 
short-comings]  is  turning  out  a  most  excellent  ser- 
vant, and  seems  the  carefullest,  honestest  creature 
living."  ..."  The  fact  is  I  have  no  delight  in  cows, 
and  have  happily  no  concern  with  them,"  and  so  on. 
Every  statement  that  Froude  made  about  the 
Craigenputtock  life  has  been  specifically  traversed 
by  Mrs.  Carlyle  herself,  and  yet,  knowing  this,  he 
ventured  to  put  them  forward,  and  although  his 
attention  was  called  to  their  incorrectness  he  never 
had  the  grace  to  contradict  them.  As  was  her 
manner,  Mrs.  Carlyle  often  dilates  with  mock  and 
merry  consternation  on  her  housewife  difficulties, 
and  amplifies  into  haystacks  the  molehills  that 
obstructed  her  path,  but  no  one  with  a  milligram  of 
humour  could  take  these  sallies  seriously.  Looking 
back  on  these  old  times  when  she  was  ill  and 
depressed,  the  far  slanting  shadows  may  have  dark- 
ened them  and  caused  her  to  speak  of  them  with 
repugnance  and  gloom,  but  the  chronicles  she  has 

2^ 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

left  of  them  prove  that  they  were  full  of  healthful 
activity  and  tranquil  happiness. 

Froude  does  not  refer  to  the  Craigenputtock  stories 
in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  but  he  still  repre- 
sents Mrs.  Carlyle  as  a  household  drudge  in  London, 
thus  repeating  a  thrice-refuted  fallacy.  The  care  and 
direction  of  her  small  establishment  was  no  heavy 
burden  to  her,  and  to  have  attempted  to  relieve  her 
of  it  would  have  been  to  give  her  pain.  "  Perfection 
of  housekeeping  was,"  said  Carlyle,  "  her  clear  and 
speedy  attainment,"  and  as  a  woman  takes  pride  in 
doing  that  which  she  can  do  well,  Mrs.  Carlyle  gloried 
in  her  marketings,  and  mendings,  and  lustrations,  and 
recounts,  with  exquisite  burlesque,  her  experiences  of 
her  domestic  servants.  That  she  had  for  many  years 
only  one  servant  was  her  own  choice ;  her  husband 
urged  her  to  have  two,  but  she  long  resisted  his 
entreaties,  and  when  at  last  she  yielded  to  them  was 
miserable  until  the  second  servant  was  got  out  of  the 
house.  "  So  I  am  now  mistress  of  two  servants,"  she 
wrote,  "and  ready  to  hang  myself.  Seriously  the 
change  is  nearly  intolerable  to  me,  though  both  these 
women  are  good  servants,  as  servants  go.  But  the 
twoness!  The  much  ado  about  nothing!"  In  all 
domestic  affairs  it  was  she  and  not  her  husband  who 
restricted  expenditure.  "  With  great  difficulty,"  he 
writes,  "  I  had  got  her  induced,  persuaded,  com- 
manded to  take  two  weekly  drives  in  a  hired 
brougham  (more  difficulty  in  persuading  you  to  go 
into  any  expense  than  other  men  have  to  persuade 
their  wives  to  keep  out  of  it)."     Instead  of  being  "a 

household  drudge,"  she  had  often  not  enough  to  do, 

28 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

and  it  might  have  been  an  advantage  to  her  if,  in  the 
absence  of  children,  she  had  taken  up  some  definite 
employment.  For  serious  literary  work  she  had  not 
sufficient  persistence.  The  letters  were  brilliant 
spurts,  but  a  continuous  flow  she  could  not  maintain, 
although  her  husband  gave  her  every  encouragement. 
In  1842  he  wrote  to  her:  "  My  prayer  is  and  has 
always  been  that  you  would  rouse  up  the  fine  facul- 
ties that  are  yours,  into  some  course  of  real  true  work 
which  you  felt  to  be  worthy  of  them  and  of  you.  .  .  . 
I  will  never  give  up  the  hope  to  see  you  adequately 
btisy  with  your  whole  mind,  discovering,  as  all  human 
beings  may  do,  that  even  in  the  grimmest  rocky 
wilderness  of  existence  there  are  blessed  well-springs, 
there  is  an  everlasting  guiding  star.  Courage,  my 
poor  little  Jeannie."  In  July  of  the  same  year  he 
wrote  to  his  brother  Alick:  "  Jane  is  still  altogether 
weakly,  but  she  grows  better ;  time  alone  can  alleviate 
that  kind  of  sorrow  [the  loss  of  her  mother] .  She  is 
left  very  lonely  in  this  world  now ;  her  kindred  mostly 
gone ;  very  few  of  the  people  vaguely  called  'friends ' 
worth  much  to  her!  It  would  be  better  for  her  also 
if  she  had  more  imperative  employment  to  follow :  a 
small  portion  of  the  day  suffices  for  all  her  obligatory 
work,  and  the  rest,  when  she  cannot  seek  work  for 
herself,  is  apt  to  be  spent  in  sorrowful  reflexions." 

Having  shown  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  on  one  hand  bullied  by  her  husband  and 
on  the  other  neglected,  Froude  next  proceeds  to 
assure  us  that  she  was  sarcastic  when  she  spoke  of 
him, "  a  curious  blending  of  pity,  contempt,  and  other 

feelings."     And  no  wonder,  if  Froude  is  right;  but 

29 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

in  a  matter  like  this  we  cannot  entirely  depend  on 
his  ipse  dixit,  and,  until  some  one  can  point  out  a 
single  utterance  in  any  one  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  writings 
betokening  pity  or  contempt  of  her  husband,  we  shall 
believe  that  Froude  is  once  more  indulging  in  one 
of  his  imaginary  conversations.  She  had  a  sharp 
tongue :  angry  words  about  her  husband  sometimes 
escaped  her.  He  and  she  now  and  then  no  doubt 
exchanged  taunts  in  private,  and  in  company  they 
chaffed  and  quizzed  each  other  unmercifully,  but 
that  she  had  ever  expressed  pity  and  contempt  for 
him,  to  one  of  his  professing  friends,  behind  his  back, 
is  unbelievable.  Why,  pride  in  him  was  the  mainstay 
of  her  life.  "  Thanks,  Darling,"  writes  Carlyle,  "  for 
your  shining  words  and  acts,  which  were  continual 
in  my  eyes,  and  in  no  other  mortal's.  Worthless  I 
was  your  divinity;  wrapt  in  your  perpetual  love  of  me 
and  pride  in  me,  in  defiance  of  all  men  and  things." 
"  She  had  from  an  early  period,"  wrote  her  sorrow- 
ing husband,  "  formed  her  own  little  opinion  of  me 
(what  an  Eldorado  to  me  blind,  ungrateful,  condem- 
nable,  and  heavy-laden,  and  crushed  down  into  blind- 
ness by  great  misery,  as  I  oftenest  was),  and  she  never 
flinched  from  it  for  an  instant,  I  think,  or  cared  or 
counted  what  the  world  said  to  the  contrary  (very 
brave,  magnanimous,  and  noble  truly  she  was  in  all 
this),  but  to  have  the  world  confirm  her  in  it  was 
always  a  sensible  pleasure  which  she  took  no  pains 
to  hide  especially  from  me."  She  was  an  honour- 
able woman  and  a  faithful  wife,  and  could  not  have 
:)een  guilty  of  the  treachery  that  Froude  ascribes 
-)  her.    In  1846,  after  twenty  years  of  married  life, 

30 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

when  all  her  husband's  faults  and  weaknesses  must 
have  been  known  to  her,  she  wrote  to  him :  "  I  have 
grown  to  love  you  the  longer,  the  more,  till  now  you 
are  grown  to  be  the  whole  universe,  God,  everything 
to  me,  but  in  proportion  as  I  have  got  to  know  all 
your  importance  to  me,  I  have  been  losing  faith  in 
my  importance  to  you."  Is  this  pity  and  contempt  ? 
It  was  necessary  to  show  some  ground  for  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  alleged  pity  and  contempt  of  her  husband, 
and  so  Froude  reduces  him  to  the  rank  of  a  miserable 
egotist  and  valetudinarian.  He  suffered,  he  admits, 
from  dyspepsia  and  want  of  sleep,  but  whereas  his 
wife  "  was  expected  to  bear  her  trouble  in  patience, 
and  received  hints  on  the  duty  of  submission  if  she 
spoke  impatiently,  he  was  never  more  eloquent  than 
in  speaking  of  his  own  crosses."  He  himself,  Froude 
opines,  "had  really  a  vigorous  constitution.  He 
never  had  a  day's  serious  illness.  He  used  to  ride 
and  walk  in  the  wildest  weather."  Carlyle  was 
therefore  in  point  of  fact  a  malingerer,  or  a  ro- 
bust invalid,  selfishly  and  querulously  vexing  those 
around  him  by  his  unmanly  appeals  for  sympathy  in 
his  purely  imaginary  ailments.  Hypochondria  in 
Froude 's  eyes  is  a  sort  of  sick-robe,  put  on  for  toilet 
purposes,  and  that  can  be  laid  aside  at  pleasure.  He 
never  himself  suffered  from  it,  but  he  ought  to  have 
remembered,  even  in  his  eagerness  to  prove  Carlyle 
an  impostor,  that  many  other  men  of  genius  have 
suffered  in  exactly  the  same  way.  Hypochondria 
is,  indeed,  a  frequent  accompaniment  of  great  intel- 
lectual activity.  That  Carlyle  had  naturally  a  fine 
constitution  may  be  inferred  from  the  age  to  which 

31 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

he  lived,  but  length  of  days  is  not  incompatible  with 
a  suffering  existence.  The  active  exercise  he  took 
was  essential  to  alleviate  the  irritability  of  the  nervous 
system,  which  his  strenuous  work  induced,  and  he 
was,  from  first  to  last,  one  of  those  workers  to  whom 
production  was  not  facile  but  arduous  and  exhausting. 
Hypochondria  is  a  terribly  real  disease ;  often,  as  all 
medical  men  know,  involving  more  distress  than 
graver  and  more  mortal  maladies.  Dyspepsia  and 
insomnia  combined,  as  literary  men  do  not  require 
to  be  told,  may  prove  afflictive  and  incapacitating  to 
an  extraordinary  degree.  They  have  driven  many  a 
man  of  rare  ability  and  promise  to  madness  and 
suicide,  and  that  Carlyle  did  not  succumb  to  them, 
in  the  concentrated  form  and  inveterate  type,  in  which 
they  attacked  him,  is  evidence  of  his  fortitude  and 
will  power.  From  his  twenty-fourth  year  until  his 
work  was  laid  aside  they  never  left  him  alone,  and 
there  can  be  no  question  that  they  often  caused  him 
what  he  called  torture  and  purgatorial  pains.  The 
dyspepsia  was  set  up  by  the  ill-cooked  and  somewhat 
scanty  food  supplied  to  him  when  he  was  living 
in  lodgings  in  Edinburgh  on  155.  a  week,  and  in 
Kirkaldy  on  ;^6o  a  year,  out  of  which  he  helped  his 
family,  and  bravely  working  his  way,  and  the  insomnia 
followed  in  its  train,  when  he  began  to  overtax  his 
brain.  Froude  makes  light  of  Carlyle's  sufferings, 
and  in  order  to  bring  him  into  contempt  hints  that 
he  roared  loudly  when  little  hurt.  The  many  doctors 
he  consulted  did  not  think  so,  nor  did  his  wife,  who 
best  knew  what  he  endured,  and  was  unflagging  in 
her  sympathy  and  efforts  to  devise  alleviations.    He 

32 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

grasped  at  all  feasible  remedies,  and  even  for  some 
years  gave  up  smoking,  his  chief  solace,  in  the  hope 
of  obtaining  relief. 

But  while  Carlyle  was  in  Froude's  view  shamming, 
Mrs.  Carlyle  was  really  suffering  poignantly  from  the 
effects  of  his  cruel  and  inconsiderate  treatment  of 
her.  "In  1862,"  says  Froude,  "her  health  finally 
broke  down,  and  there  came  on  that  strange  illness 
which  doctors  failed  to  understand,  or  if  they  under- 
stood it,  they  did  not  venture  to  speak  plainly  " — a 
sentence  which  includes  two  erroneous  statements 
and  an  unwarrantable  reflexion  on  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
medical  advisers.  The  final  breakdown  in  her  health 
occurred  not  in  1862,  but  in  1863,  and  was  the  imme- 
diate result  of  shock  and  injury  sustained  in  a  serious 
street  accident  in  the  City.  Her  illness  was  not  at 
all  strange,  and  was  well  understood  by  her  doctors 
as  the  culmination  of  a  nervous  affection,  the  seeds 
of  which  were  born  with  her,  fostered  by  her  bring- 
ing up,  and  brought  to  full  growth  and  fruition 
by  the  circumstances  of  her  life.  Her  doctors 
would  not  have  hesitated  to  speak  plainly  had  they 
agreed  with  Froude  that  it  was  her  husband's  "  wild 
irritability"  that  had  shattered  her  nerves;  and  how 
utterly  reckless  Froude's  assertions  are  may  be  real- 
ised when  we  read  a  few  lines  further  on  in  his 
pamphlet  that  these  doctors  whom  he  had  just 
accused  of  poltroonery  "  insisted  as  a  first  necessity 
on  her  separation  from  him  [her  husband] ,  the  con- 
stant agitation  of  his  presence  and  the  equally  con- 
stant provocation  which  his  forgetf ulness  and  preoccu- 
pation made  incessant  in  spite  of  efforts,  taking  away 
3  33 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

all  hope  of  amendment  while  the  cause  remained  " — 
a  statement  which  is  equally  erroneous  with  all  the 
rest.  The  doctors  never  insisted  on  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
separation  from  her  husband,  and  never  attributed 
her  condition  to  his  irritability.  "  By  everybody  it 
had  been  agreed,"  wrote  Carlyle,  "  that  a  change  of 
scene  (as  usual  when  all  else  has  failed)  was  the  thing 
to  be  looked  to:  St.  Leonard's  as  soon  as  the  weather 
will  permit,  said  Dr.  Quain  and  everybody,  especially 
Dr.  Blakiston;"  and  it  is  remarkable  that  if  the 
doctors  regarded  separation  from  her  husband  "  as  a 
first  necessity,"  she  was  not  removed  to  St.  Leon- 
ard's until  March,  1864,  although  her  illness  began  in 
October,  1863.  That  Mrs.  Carlyle  did  not  regard 
separation  from  her  husband  as  either  necessary  or 
healing  may  be  gathered  from  her  tenderly  affection- 
ate letters  to  him  from  St.  Leonard's.  No  sooner 
had  she  arrived  there  than  she  wrote  to  him,  "  Oh,  I 
would  like  you  beside  me!  I  am  so  terribly  alone/" 
"She  had  been  again  and  again  given  up,"  says 
Froude,  blundering  on ;  but  nobody  ever  gave  her 
up,  and  she  died  ultimately,  not  from  the  nervous 
malady  from  which  she  was  suffering  in  1863,  but 
from  heart  failure.  She  was,  of  course,  despondent 
about  herself,  but  that  was  an  inevitable  part  of  her 
illness,  and  the  anxiety  of  her  doctors  was  connected 
more  with  her  mental  than  with  her  physical  state. 
She  said  of  herself,  "  The  actual  suffering  if  cleared 
of  the  aggravations  of  the  Imagination  would  be 
nothing  to  make  a  fuss  about."  "Suddenly,  as  if 
from  the  grave,"  exclaims  Froude,  "  she  came  back ; " 
but  the  recovery  which  began  in  July,  1864,  was  very 

34 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

gradual,  and  was  not  complete  until  October  of  that 
year,  if  then.  "She  still  mocked  to  me,"  goes  on 
Froude,  "about  him  [Carlyle],  and  the  old  resent- 
ment was  there,  though  it  showed  itself  less."  If 
she  did  so,  she  must  have  been  the  most  deceitful  of 
women,  for  at  this  very  time  she  was  writing  to  her 
friends  pouring  forth  her  gratitude  to  her  husband 
for  his  solicitous  care  of  her.  "  I  cannot  tell  you," 
she  wrote  to  Mrs.  Austin,  "  how  kind  and  good  Mr. 
Carlyle  is ! "  "  The  injury  had  gone  too  deep," 
proceeds  the  sepulchral  Froude.  ..."  Her  nerves 
had  been  so  shaken  by  her  many  years  of  suffering 
that  some  singular  disease  had  developed  itself,  I 
believe,  in  her  spine."  But  Mrs.  Carlyle  never  had 
anything  the  matter  with  her  spine,  her  nervous  dis- 
ease was  in  no  degree  singular,  and  had  in  it  in  its  later 
stages  a  large  element  of  hysteria,  and  she  died,  as 
we  have  said,  of  heart  failure,  from  which  she  had 
suffered  at  intervals  for  many  years. 

No  one  can,  we  think,  read  Froude's  account  of 
Mrs.  Carlyle 's  illness  in  the  light  of  the  explanations 
now  given,  without  feeling  that  it  was  throughout 
calculated  to  create  prejudice  against  her  husband, 
whom  he  almost  accuses  of  having  caused  her  death. 
No  one  can  read  it  and  not  realise  that  it  is  typical 
of  Froude's  treatment  of  Carlyle  in  other  matters, 
without  understanding  the  indignation  that  his 
elaborate  fabrications  have  induced  amongst  Carlyle's 
friends. 

Froude  set  himself,  in  writing  "  My  Relations  with 
Carlyle,"  to  improve  on  the  mixed  picture  of  the  Life 
and  to  exhibit  him  as  a  hard,  heartless  man  with  no 

35 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

redeeming  traits  of  character.  "  He  made  little  of 
other  people's  sufferings,"  he  says.  But  is  this  true? 
"  Miss  Martineau,"  says  Professor  Masson,  "  in  her 
description  of  Carlyle  from  her  own  knowledge, 
actually  singled  out  for  special  note,  as  that  in  his 
character  which  distinguished  him  most  from  all 
other  men  she  had  seen,  his  enormous  power  of 
sympathy.  It  was  a  most  correct  observation.  No 
one  who  knew  Carlyle  but  must  have  noted  how 
instantaneously  he  was  affected  or  even  agitated  by 
any  case  of  difficulty  or  distress  in  which  he  was 
consulted  or  that  was  casually  brought  to  his  cogni- 
sance, and  with  what  restless  curiosity  and  exactitude 
he  would  inquire  into  all  the  particulars,  till  he  had 
conceived  the  case  thoroughly,  and,  as  it  were,  taken 
the  whole  pain  of  it  into  himself.  The  practical 
procedure,  if  any  was  possible,  was  sure  to  follow." 
This  very  Froude,  who  declares  that  Carlyle  made 
little  of  other  people's  sufferings,  had  written  else- 
where— he  must  have  forgotten  it — "  I  had  not  ex- 
pected so  much  detailed  compassion  in  little  things. 
I  found  that  personal  sympathy  with  suffering  lay  at 
the  root  of  all  his  thoughts;  and  that  attention  to 
little  things  was  as  characteristic  of  his  conduct  as  it 
was  of  his  intellect."  In  another  place  he  wrote — 
"  No  one,  however,  can  read  these  letters  [his  letters 
to  his  wife]  or  ten  thousand  like  them  without  recog- 
nising the  affectionate  tenderness  which  lay  at  the 
bottom  of  his  nature."  No  one  can  recall  the  inci- 
dents of  Carlyle's  career,  his  contributions  to  one 
brother's  education  and  to  another's  farming,  when 
he  was  still  poor  and  struggling,  his  frequent  little 

36 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

gifts  to  his  father  and  mother,  his  never-forgotten 
birthday  presents  to  his  wife,  his  exertions  on  behalf 
of  the  Misses  Lowes,  and  scores  of  hke  acts,  with- 
out recognising  that  he  was  a  thoughtful,  sympathetic 
and  large-hearted  man,  and  that  Froude  has  cruelly 
maligned  him.  How  did  this  man,  who  was,  Froude 
tells  us,  in  the  habit  of  "bursting  into  violence  at  the 
smallest  and  absurdest  provocations,"  comport  him- 
self at  that  terrible  juncture  when  John  Stuart  Mill 
came  to  announce  the  burning  of  the  first  volume 
of  the  manuscript  of  the  "  French  Revolution  "  ?  He 
never  lost  his  composure,  and  the  first  words  he  spoke 
to  his  wife  when  Mill  was  gone  were,  "  Well,  Mill, 
poor  fellow,  is  very  miserable.  We  must  try  to  keep 
from  him  how  serious  the  loss  is  to  us." 

But  not  only,  Froude  would  have  us  believe,  did 
Carlyle  shatter  his  wife's  nerves  and  shorten  her 
days,  he  also  made  cruel  shipwreck  of  her  faith. 
"  She  had  accepted,"  he  writes,  "  the  destructive  part 
of  his  opinions  like  so  many  others,  but  he  had  failed 
to  satisfy  her  that  he  knew  where  positive  truth  lay. 
He  had  taken  from  her,  as  she  mournfully  said  [when 
did  she  say  it,  or  where?  save  in  one  of  Froude's  im- 
aginary conversations],  the  creed  in  which  she  had 
been  bred,  but  he  had  been  unable  to  put  anything  in 
place  of  it.  She  believed  nothing.  On  the  spiritual 
side  of  things  her  mind  was  a  perfect  blank;  she 
looked  into  her  own  heart  and  into  the  world  beyond 
her,  and  it  was  all  void  and  desert ;  there  was  no  word 
of  consolation,  no  word  of  hope."  It  is  strange  that 
these  teachings  of  Carlyle,  which  produced  on  Froude 
what  he  calls  "a  conviction  of  sin,"  which  taught 

37 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

him  the  intense  seriousness  of  Hfe,  and  awakened 
him  to  the  meaning  of  duty  and  the  overpowering 
obligation  to  do  it,  and  "  saved  him  from  atheism," 
as  he  has  informed  us,  thus  enlarging  and  bracing 
his  existence,  should  have  had  such  an  opposite 
effect  on  Mrs.  Carlyle,  rendering  her  hopeless  and 
void.  One  would  have  thought  that  this  thoughtful 
woman,  the  most  brilliant  and  interesting  Froude 
had  ever  fallen  in  with,  would  have  been  influenced 
by  Carlyle 's  doctrine  very  much  as  Froude  himself 
was.  But  not  so.  What  was  his  meat  was  her 
poison.  Froude  was  redeemed,  Mrs.  Carlyle  was 
cast  into  outer  darkness. 

Long  before  her  marriage,  Miss  Jane  Welsh  had 
emancipated  herself  from  the  creed  in  which  she  was 
brought  up.  When  she  was  still  a  school-girl  at 
Haddington,  so  Froude  tells  us, "  her  tutor  introduced 
her  to  'Virgil,'  and  the  effect  of  'Virgil'  and  her 
other  Latin  studies  was  to  change  her  religion  and 
make  her  into  a  sort  of  Pagan."  And  a  sort  of 
Pagan  she  ever  afterw^ards  remained.  Her  words 
were  as  follows:  "That  my  Latin  studies  pursued 
far  too  closely  and  strenuously  for  so  young  a  girl 
had  changed  my  religion,  if  I  could  be  said  to  have 
one,  is  strictly  true,  and  it  wasn't  my  religion  only 
that  they  influenced,  my  whole  being  was  imbued 
with  them."  In  giving  this  passage  Froude  has 
omitted,  surely,  we  are  entitled  to  say,  has  curiously 
omitted,  the  words,  "  if  I  could  be  said  to  have  one," 
i.e.y  a  religion.  The  letter  which  she  wrote  to  her 
grandmother,  on  the  occasion  of  her  father's  death 
when  she  was  eighteen  years  old,  is  a  clear  proof  that 

38 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

she  had  then  parted  company  with  revealed  truth,  as 
taught  in  the  Church  of  Scotland.  She  bows  to  the 
chastisement  of  the  Divine  Power,  and  acknowledges 
that  the  ways  of  the  Almighty  are  mysterious ;  but 
there  is  not,  in  that  letter,  one  ray  of  Christian  faith 
or  hope.  No  believing  Scottish  girl  of  the  period 
could  possibly  have  written  such  a  letter  under  such 
circumstances. 

That  Miss  Welsh  had  shed  whatever  faith  she 
once  possessed  and  had  developed  some  of  the 
unlovely  traits  of  character  which  so  often  accompany 
that  disrobement  in  a  woman,  long  before  she  fell 
under  the  influence  of  Carlyle,  is  abundantly  clear. 
In  182 1,  that  is  to  say  in  the  year  in  which  Carlyle 
was  introduced  to  her,  we  find  Edward  Irving 
expressing  serious  anxiety  as  to  her  spiritual  state. 
He  had  laboured  with  all  his  energies  to  lead  his 
pupil  to  think  of  Christianity  as  he  did  himself,  but 
he  had  serious  misgivings  respecting  her.  "  She  con- 
templates," he  wrote  to  Carlyle,  "  the  inferiority  of 
others  rather  from  the  point  of  ridicule  and  contempt 
than  from  that  of  commiseration  and  relief ;  and  by 
so  doing  she  not  only  leaves  objects  in  distress  and 
loses  the  luxury  of  doing  good,  but  she  contracts  in 
her  own  mind  a  degree  of  coldness  and  bitterness 
which  suits  ill  with  my  conception  of  female  character 
and  a  female's  station  in  society.  ...  I  could  like  to 
see  her  surrounded  with  a  more  sober  set  of  compan- 
ions than  Rousseau  and  Byron  and  such  like.  ...  I 
fear  Jane  has  already  dipped  too  deep  into  that 
spring,  so  that  unless  some  more  solid  food  be 
afforded  I  fear  she  will  escape  altogether  out  of  the 

39 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

region  of  my  sympathies  and  the  sympathies  of 
honest  home-bred  men.  In  these  feehngs  I  know 
you  will  join  me."  In  1822,  Irving  wrote  to  Miss 
Welsh  herself,  "  Now  it  does  give  me  great  hope 
that  God  will  yet  be  pleased  to  open  your  mind  to 
the  highest  of  all  knowledge,  the  knowledge  of  His 
Blessed  Son,  and  give  therewith  the  highest  of  all 
delights,  of  being  like  His  Son  in  character  and  in 
destiny,  when  I  see  you  not  alienated  from  men  of 
genius  by  their  being  men  of  religion,  but  attracted 
to  them  I  think  rather  the  more.  I  could  wish  indeed 
— and  forgive  me  when  I  make  free  to  suggest  it — 
that  your  mind  were  less  anxious  for  the  distinction 
of  being  enrolled  amongst  those  whom  this  world  has 
crowned  with  their  admiration,  than  among  those 
whom  God  has  crowned  with  His  approval.  .  .  .  Oh, 
how  few  I  find,  my  dear  Jane,  hardly  have  I  found  a 
single  one,  who  can  stand  the  intoxication  of  high 
talents  or  resist  presuming  to  lord  it  over  others." 

In  Carlyle's  numerous  letters  to  Miss  Welsh,  from 
his  introduction  to  her  in  182 1  till  their  marriage  in 
1826,  there  is  not  a  sentence  calculated  to  inspire 
doubt,  while  there  is  much  that  ought  to  have  exalted 
her  moral  nature,  and  after  marriage  his  creed  might 
have  saved  her  from  blank  scepticism  had  she  chosen 
to  accept  it.  But  she  was  a  worldly  little  woman, 
and  her  Godlessness,  until  she  was  by  severe  illness 
brought  back  to  some  semblance  of  piety,  was  perhaps 
a  rather  disenchanting  element  in  her  character. 
Froude  would  have  us  believe  that  in  relation  to  his 
wife  Carlyle  was  an  iconoclast  and  a  faith  wrecker,  an 

atheist  of  the  most  blatant  type.     But  what  are  the 

40 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

facts — the  facts  of  things — as  Carlyle  would  have  had 
it  ?  He  was  a  fervid  Theist,  proclaiming  the  existence 
of  God  with  as  much  earnestness  and  insistence  as  the 
inspired  camel-driver  of  Arabia.  He  was  an  intensely 
religious  man,  who,  while  rejecting  theologic  dogmas 
and  formulas,  accepted  Christianity  in  its  ethical 
aspects,  and  was  never  tired  of  preaching  truth, 
honesty,  temperance,  mercy,  humility  and  God-fear- 
ing. He  had  the  deepest  reverence  for  the  life  and 
character  of  Christ  as  represented  in  the  Gospels. 
He  retained  a  conviction  of  the  efficacy  of  prayer, 
and  had  a  lurking  belief  in  a  Particular  Providence, 
and  a  clinging  hope  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
When  stricken  in  years  he  found  that  expression  was 
best  given  to  his  spiritual  needs  in  Pope's  verses  in 
the  "  Universal  Prayer" — 

"  Father  of  All !  in  every  age, 
In  every  clime,  adored, 
By  saint,  by  savage,  and  by  sage, 
Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord  ! 

Thou  Great  First-Cause,  least  understood, 

Who  all  my  sense  confined 
To  know  but  this,  that  Thou  art  good, 

And  that  myself  am  blind." 

"  Not  a  word  of  that,"  he  wrote  in  1868,  "  requires 
change  from  me  at  this  time,  if  words  are  to  be  used 
at  all." 

Carlyle's  creed  might  have  given  some  support  to 
Jane  Welsh  and  filled  up  the  blank  in  her  mind  had 
she  been  able  to  grasp  it  and  believe  that  the  Maker 
of  all  things  will  do  right ;  but,  as  clever,  self-sufficient 
women  are  apt  to  do  when  they  have  thrown  away 

41 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

faith,  she  went  to  the  extreme  of  scepticism.  Per- 
haps if  she  had  read  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  "  she 
might  have  been  cured  of  her  doubts.  That  she 
was  what  she  was,  was  no  fault  of  Carlyle's.  Had 
she  remained  in  the  fold  in  which  she  was  brought 
up,  he  would  never  have  called  her  out  of  it,  for  he 
recognised  that  spiritual  truth  may  have  many  differ- 
ent vestments.  After  his  own  re-birth  we  find  him 
writing  to  his  aged  mother  thus:  "  Often,  my  dear 
mother,  in  solitary  pensive  moments,  does  it  come 
across  me  like  the  cold  shadow  of  death  that  we  two 
must  part  in  the  course  of  time.  I  shudder  at  the 
thought,  and  find  no  refuge  except  in  humbly  trust- 
ing that  the  great  God  will  surely  appoint  us  a 
meeting  in  that  far  country  to  which  we  are  tending. 
May  He  bless  you  for  ever,  my  dear  mother,  and 
keep  up  in  your  heart  the  sublime  hopes  which 
at  present  serve  as  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and 
a  pillar  of  fire  by  night,  to  guide  our  footsteps 
through  the  wilderness  of  life.  We  are  in  His 
hands.  He  will  not  utterly  forsake  us.  Let  us  trust 
in  Him." 

Two  years  before  her  death,  when  his  wife  was 
visiting  Dr.  Russell  at  Thornhill  amidst  the  scenes 
of  her  girlhood,  Carlyle  wrote  to  her:  "  What  strange 
old  days  (sunk  like  old  ages)  you  look  out  upon  from 
your  windows  there,  my  poor  heavy-laden  little 
woman.  Yes ;  but  it  is  for  ever  true  '  The  Eternal 
rules  above  us '  and  in  us  and  around  us ;  and  this  is 
not  Hell  or  Hades  but  the  'Place  of  Hope' — the 
Place  where  what  is  right  will  h^  fulfilled.    And  you 

know  that,  too,  in  your  way,  my  own  little  Jeannie — 

42 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

and  you  will  not  and  must  not  forget  it ;  forgetting 
it  one  would  go  mad." 

But  all  this  was  hypocrisy,  Froude  suggests.  "  I 
suppose,"  he  remarks  of  Carlyle,  "that  his  own 
inconsistencies  interfered  with  the  effect  of  his  teach- 
ing. He  'recked  not  his  own  rede,'  and  those  whose 
practice  falls  short  of  their  theories  do  not  seem  to 
believe  really  in  their  theories  themselves."  So  Mrs. 
Carlyle  knew  her  husband  for  an  impostor,  and 
laughed  in  her  sleeve  at  his  invocations  of  the 
Silences,  the  Eternities,  etc.  And  yet  of  this  very 
man,  whom  Froude  thus  estimates,  in  1887,  he  had 
written  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  in  1880:  "I  have 
been  reading  over  the  letters  to  his  mother  and 
brothers.  They  are  so  admirable,  aPid  g^ve  so  full  a 
picture  of  his  inner  life — so  consistent  from  first  to 
last,  that  I  think,  when  the  'Reminiscences'  are 
published,  these  letters  ought  to  form  an  accompany- 
ing volume.  No  life  could  be  written  which  would 
furnish  so  complete  a  conception  of  him — of  his  own 
nature  and  of  the  circumstances  under  which  he  had 
to  work." 

We  have  thus  far  followed  Froude  in  his  pamphlet, 
"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  and  have  found  it  really 
an  exposition , of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Carlyle's  relations  with 
each  other.  If  we  ask  what  the  impression  left  by 
this  exposition  is,  the  answer  must  surely  be  that 
Carlyle,  if  Froude  is  to  be  believed,  was  a  bully  and 
a  brute,  selfish  and  vaporish,  incessantly  wrangling 
with  his  unhappy  wife  whom  he  neglected,  ill-treated, 
compelled  to  engage  in  menial  offices  and  alienated 
from  religion,   thus    undermining   her  health    and 

43 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

hastening  her  death.  Fine  phrases  are  all  very  well, 
but  they  cannot  obscure  the  "  facts  of  things,"  if  they 
are  facts,  and  when  Froude  tells  us  that  he  did  not 
allow  his  reverence  and  admiration  for  Carlyle's 
intellect  and  high  moral  greatness  to  be  interfered 
with  by  what  he  saw  and  heard,  we  can  only  marvel 
at  his  moral  obtuseness  and  his  heedlessness  in  writ- 
ing down  his  own  condemnation.  Nay,  it  must  be 
said  that  if  his  tale  is  true,  there  was  more  than  moral 
obtuseness  in  Froude 's  conduct;  there  was  cowardly 
acquiescence  in  a  flagrant  wrong.  For  six  years,  by 
his  own  account,  he  stood  by,  consenting  to  the  slow 
martyrdom  of  a  woman  whom  he  has  described  as 
bright  ana  sparkling  and  tender,  and  uttered  no  word 
of  remonstranc/t.or  protest.  He  saw  her  involved  in 
a  perpetual  Uizzand,  and  did  nothing  to  shelter  her. 
He  witnessed  at  Cheyne  Row  the  enactment  of  "  a 
tragedy  as  stern  and  real  as  the  story  of  CEdipus," 
but  it  was  no  business  of  his.  It  was  enough  for  him 
to  be  admitted  to  the  Cheyne  Row  tea  parties  and 
enjoy  the  brilliancy  of  the  conversation.  Froude's 
representatives  must  ultimately  feel  grateful  to  us  for 
showing  that  he  was  not  altogether  as  callous  as  he 
has  endeavoured  to  prove  himself  to  have  been. 

For  what  we  have  heard  hitherto  about  Carlyle 
from  Froude,  Froude  is  himself  responsible.  For 
the  general  description  of  the  life  at  Cheyne  Row 
and  of  Carlyle's  treatment  of  his  wife,  he  has,  in  "  My 
Relations  with  Carlyle,"  drawn  entirely  on  his  own 
reminiscences.  We  are  expected  to  receive  with 
faith  his  recollections  of  what  he  noticed  and  of  the 
gossip  he  heard  when  admitted  to  Carlyle's  family 

44 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

circle,  which,  with  an  unparalleled  abuse  of  hospi- 
tality, he  has  made  use  of  to  sully  the  good  name  of 
his  host.  No  particular  instance  is  recalled;  no 
confirmatory  evidence  is  quoted;  no  documentary 
corroboration  Is  referred  to.  The  charges  rest  on 
the  unsupported  testimony  of  an  habitual  blunderer. 

But  besides  the  general  charges  against  Carlyle  in 
connection  with  his  treatment  of  his  wife,  which 
Froude  has  made,  he  has  three  specific  charges  to 
bring  forward,  and  for  these,  while  he  has  adopted 
and  published  them,  he  does  not  make  himself  directly 
answerable.  They  are  grave  charges.  One  impugns 
Carlyle's  conduct  in  connection  with  his  friendship 
with  Lady  Ashburton.  Another  traces  the  unhappi- 
ness  of  his  married  life  to  a  physical  defect  under 
which,  it  is  alleged,  he  laboured,  and  which  made  his 
marriage  no  marriage.  A  third  accuses  him  of  using 
personal  violence  to  his  wife.  Each  of  these  three 
charges  rests  exclusively  upon  the  evidence  of  one 
witness,  and  in  each  case  that  witness  is  the  same 
person,  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury.  The  whole  edifice 
of  imputation  which  Froude  has  with  so  much  in- 
genuity and  apparent  ingenuousness  erected,  rests 
solely  on  confidential  communications  made  to  him 
by  this  lady,  and  the  first  and  most  essential  point  to 
determine  is  her  credibility. 

Froude  did  not,  of  course,  fail  to  realise  this.  He 
perceived  that  it  was  of  paramount  importance  to  his 
case  that  Miss  Jewsbury  should  be  believed,  and  he 
has  therefore  taken  pains  to  show  that  she  had  the 
best  opportunities  of  knowing  what  she  spoke  about, 
and  was  a  faithful,  guileless  creature;  and  in  doing 

45 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

this  he  has  resorted  to  methods  which  are  certainly 
not  characterised  by  an  excess  of  scrupulosity.  Mrs. 
Carlyle,  he  tells  us,  spoke  and  wrote  of  Geraldine 
Jewsbury  as  her  Consuelo ;  but  if  she  did  so,  she  must 
have  used  the  appellation  in  an  ironical  sense,  for 
their  correspondence  proves  that  she  never  took  any 
bit  of  advice  Miss  Jewsbury  offered,  snubbed  her 
peremptorily  whenever  she  ventured  to  express  an 
opinion,  and  looked  upon  her  sometimes  more  as  an 
exasperator  than  as  a  comforter.  That  they  were 
often  on  terms  of  close  intimacy  is  true.  Miss  Jews- 
bury was  a  gifted  woman  who  had  introduced  herself 
to  Carlyle  by  writing  to  him  as  one  of  his  ardent 
worshippers,  and  became  a  hanger-on  of  the  Cheyne 
Row  household.  But  her  intimacy  with  Mrs.  Carlyle 
was  not  of  the  sort  which  Froude  would  have  us 
believe,  and  which  he  indicates  by  the  incorrect  state- 
ment that  Miss  Jewsbury  "  was  about  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
own  age":  the  truth  being  that  there  were  eleven 
years  between  them — Mrs.  Carlyle  having  been  born 
in  1801,  and  Miss  Jewsbury  in  181 2.  Miss  Jewsbury 
was  never  admitted  to  the  penetralia  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
thoughts  and  feelings,  but  was  kept  waiting  and 
serving  in  the  courts  without,  and  there  was  always 
an  element  of  patronage  and  protection  in  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  attitude  towards  her.  Mrs.  Carlyle  was 
flattered  by  the  worship  she  offered,  and  was  grateful 
for  the  many  delicate  attentions  she  bestowed ;  but 
from  first  to  last  she  treated  her  as  a  weak  and  a 
wayward  being,  destitute  of  discretion  and  good 
sense,  and  it  is  surely  a  significant  fact  that  Froude 
deliberately  suppressed  every  letter  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's 

46 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  ,  FROUDE 

in  which  her  candid  opinion  of  her  friend  is  set  forth. 
In  the  "  Letters  and  Memorials  "  that  Froude  selected 
and  edited,  there  is  nothing  reflecting  unfavourably 
on  Miss  Jewsbury,  whereas  in  the  "  New  Letters  and 
Memorials"  may  be  found  abundant  proofs  of  the 
light  esteem  in  which  Mrs.  Carlyle  held  her.  She 
described  her  as  a  fussy,  romantic,  hysterical  woman, 
a  considerable  fool,  with  her  head  packed  full  of 
nonsense,  and  nick-named  her  "  Miss  Gooseberry." 
"It  is  her  besetting  sin,"  she  said,  "and  her  trade 
of  novelist  has  aggravated  it — the  desire  of  feeling 
and  producing  violent  emotions."  Miss  Jewsbury 's 
intrigues  and  love  affairs  are  often  contemptuously 
alluded  to  by  Mrs.  Carlyle.  "  Geraldine,"  she  wrote, 
"  has  one  besetting  weakness.  She  is  never  happy 
unless  she  has  a  grande  passion  on  hand,  and  as 
unmarried  men  take  fright  at  her  impulsive  and 
demonstrative  ways,  her  grandes  passioiis  for  these 
thirty  years  have  been  all  expended  on  married 
men."  In  another  place  she  mentions  that  she  was 
"  openly  making  the  craziest  love  to  a  man "  who 
was  engaged  to  be  married,  and  in  another  that 
she  was  "  in  a  frenzy  over  a  letter  from  her  declared 
lover,  an  Egyptian,"  who  had  one  wife  already,  and 
in  still  another  that  she  had  herself  allowed  that  she 
had  "absolutely  no  sense  of  decency."  And  beyond 
all  this  Miss  Jewsbury 's  feelings  towards  Mrs.  Carlyle 
herself,  which  were  well-known  to  Froude,  were  of  a 
nature  that  should  have  made  him  pause  before 
listening  to  her  revelations  on  ticklish  topics.  They 
were  highly  extravagant,  and  in  some  degree  per- 
verted.   The  manifestation  by  Mrs.  Carlyle  of  some 

47 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

preference  or  supposed  preference  for  another  woman 
led  on  one  occasion  to  a  wild  outburst  of  what  Miss 
Jewsbury  herself  called  "  tiger  jealousy,"  which,  says 
Mrs.  Carlyle,  "  on  the  part  of  one  woman  towards 
another  it  had  never  entered  my  head  to  conceive. 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  she  is  not  going  mad."  Other 
instances  of  violent  emotional  perturbations  over 
Mrs.  Carlyle  are  recorded,  and  the  language  of  Miss 
Jewsbury 's  letters  to  Mrs.  Carlyle,  preserved  by  Mrs. 
Ireland,  is  often  highly  charged  and  erotic.  It  is  not 
customary  for  a  woman  of  thirty-two  years  of  age  to 
write  to  her  female  friend,  eleven  years  her  senior, 
in  such  terms  as  these :  "  You  are  never  out  of  my 
thoughts  one  hour  together; "  "  I  think  of  you  much 
more  than  if  you  were  my  lover; "  "  I  cannot  express 
my  feelings  even  to  you — vague  undefined  yearnings 
to  be  yours  in  some  way."  Of  delicate,  nervous, 
highly-strung  constitution.  Miss  Jewsbury  became  a 
morbid,  unstable,  excitable  woman,  constantly  com- 
plaining of  headaches  and  other  ailments,  and  suffer- 
ing from  mental  depression,  for  she  chronicles  of 
herself :  "  For  two  years  I  lived  only  in  short  respites 
from  this  blackness  of  despair.  It  is  not  sorrow ;  one 
could  endure  that.  Oh,  it  is  too  frightful  to  talk 
about!  The  depression  which  falls  upon  one  in  a 
moment,  enveloping  one  body  and  soul  for  hours  or 
days,  as  it  may  be,  and  the  horrid,  lucid  interval 
which  we  spend  in  dread  of  its  return,  knowing  full 
well  that  it  will  come."  All  the  biographical  details 
of  Miss  Jewsbury  which  we  possess,  and  they  are 
ample,  establish  that,  notwithstanding  her  interesting 

personality,  her  brilliant  conversational  powers  and 

48 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

fine  literary  talent,  she  was  utterly  unreliable  and 
erratic,  or,  as  Carlyle  summed  her  up,  "  a  flimsy  tatter 
of  a  creature." 

In  order  to  show  that  Carlyle  placed  some  confi- 
dence in  Miss  Jewsbury,  we  are  told  by  Froude 
that  he  "had  requested  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury, 
who  had  been  his  wife's  most  intimate  friend,  to  tell 
him  any  biographical  anecdotes  which  she  could 
remember  to  have  heard  from  Mrs.  Carlyle's  lips," 
and  that  after  reading  these  he  wrote:  "Few  or 
none  of  these  narratives  are  correct  in  details,  but 
there  is  a  certain  mythical  truth  in  all  or  most 
of  them."  This  in  the  original  is  as  follows,  being 
a  letter  to  Miss  Jewsbury:  "Dear  Geraldine, — Few 
or  none  of  these  Narratives  are  correct  in  all  the 
details;  some  of  them,  in  almost  all,  the  details 
are  incorrect.  I  have  not  read  carefully  beyond  a 
certain  point  which  is  marked  on  the  margin.  Your 
recognition  of  the  character  is  generally  true  and 
faithful ;  little  of  portraiture  in  it  that  satisfies  me. 
On  the  whole,  all  tends  to  the  mythical;  it  is  very 
strange  how  much  of  mythical  there  already  here  is ! 
As  Lady  Lothian  set  you  on  writing,  it  seems  hard 
that  she  should  not  see  what  you  have  written ;  but 
I  wish  you  to  take  her  word  of  honour  that  no  one 
else  shall;  and  my  earnest  request  to  you  is  that, 
directly yr^;;^  her  Ladyship,  you  will  bring  the  Book 
to  me  and  consign  it  to  my  keeping.  No  need  that 
an  idle-gazing  world  should  know  my  lost  Darling's 
History,  or  mine; — nor  will  they  ever; — they  may 
depend  upon  it!  One  fit  service,  and  one  only,  they 
can  do  to  Her  or  to  Me :  cease  speaking  of  us  through 
4  49 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

all  eternity,  as  soon  as  they  conveniently  can."  The 
words,  "  There  is  a  certain  mythical  truth,"  etc.,  are 
transferred  and  altered  by  Mr.  Froude  from  a  subse- 
quent passage,  and  Miss  Jewsbury's  Narratives,  which 
nobody  but  Lady  Lothian  was  to  see,  were  of  course 
published  in  full  by  Froude. 

Of  Miss  Jewsbury's  Narratives  of  his  wife,  Carlyle 
said  that  her  accounts  of  her  childhood  were  substan- 
tially correct,  but  as  regards  the  rest  "  few  or  none 
are  correct  in  all  the  details,  some  of  them  in  almost 
all  the  details  are  incorrect."  He  subsequently  refers 
to  the  Narrative  as  a  "  Book  of  Myths,"  and  declares 
that  they  grow  more  and  more  mythical  as  they  go 
on.  "Geraldine's  account  of  Comley  Bank  and  life 
at  Edinburgh  is  extremely  mythic."  "Geraldine's 
Craigenputtock  stories  are  more  mythical  than  any 
of  the  rest;"  and  it  is  upon  these  Craigenputtock 
stories,  mythical  of  the  mythic,  that  Froude  based 
his  primary  indictment  against  Carlyle  for  his  treat- 
ment, or  rather  maltreatment,  of  his  wife. 

And  this  Geraldine,  this  weaver  of  myths,  this 
hysterical  and  irresponsible  woman,  is  the  sole 
witness  he  has  to  call  in  support  of  his  serious 
charges  against  Carlyle,  two  of  which  are  now  for 
the  first  time  brought  to  light. 

It  was  in  what  may  be  called  the  "Ashburton 
Affair"  that  Froude  first  invoked  Miss  Jews- 
bury's aid — an  affair  in  connection  with  which  the 
injustice  he  has  done  Carlyle  is  made  clearly  apparent. 

His  first  knowledge  of  it — for  he  was  never  himself 
admitted  to  the  Ashburton  circle — came  to  him,  he 
states,  in  1871,  more  probably  in  1873,  when  a  large 

50 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

parcel  of  papers,  including  the  Memoir  of  Mrs. 
Carlyle  and  her  Letters,  handed  to  him  by  Carlyle, 
led  him  to  place  himself  in  communication  with  John 
Forster,  who  told  him  a  singular  story.  He  told 
him,  he  says,  "that  Lady  Ashburton  had  fallen 
deeply  in  love  with  Carlyle,  that  Carlyle  had  behaved 
nobly,  and  that  Lord  Ashburton  had  thanked  him." 
Those  who  knew  John  Forster — a  generous,  straight- 
forward man,  trained  and  even  sworn,  as  a  Commis- 
sioner in  Lunacy,  to  silence  as  to  family  secrets — will 
be  chary  in  believing  that,  even  had  he  been  certain 
of  all  this,  he  would  have  communicated  it  to  Froude, 
whose  reputation  for  literary  indiscretion  was  already 
established,  and  thus  have  compromised  the  reputa- 
tion of  a  woman  of  high  rank  and  brilliant  ability,  of 
whose  hospitality  he  had  often  partaken.  But  as  it 
turns  out  that  he  had  and  could  have  had  no  founda- 
tion for  the  defamatory  statement,  it  may  be  taken 
as  certain  that  he  never  made  it.  Familiar  as  he  was 
with  the  usages  of  society,  knowing  as  he  did  the 
terms  of  close  intimacy  on  which  the  Ashburtons 
and  Carlyles  remained  after  her  ladsyhip's  alleged 
indiscretion  and  Carlyle's  noble  conduct,  it  is  impos- 
sible that  he  could  have  harboured  such  a  suspicion. 
His  alleged  communication  to  Froude  on  the  subject, 
of  which  no  shred  of  corroboration  can  be  adduced, 
may  be  set  down  therefore  as  one  of  Froude 's  imag- 
inary conversations. 

But  even  if  John  Forster  had  told  Froude  what  he 
repeats,  the  introduction  of  the  little  bit  of  scandal 
into  Froude's  narrative  is  gratuitous  and  inexcusable. 
It  was,  he  assures  us,  wholly  untrue.    Then  why 

51 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

cause  annoyance  to  Lady  Ashburton's  family  and 
friends  by  referring  to  it  at  all?  Merely  to  secure  an 
antithetical  effect.  The  story  was  not  only  untrue, 
but  the  opposite  of  the  truth.  It  was  not,  Froude  now 
informs  us.  Lady  Ashburton  who  was  deeply  in  love 
with  Carlyle,  but  Carlyle  who  was  deeply  in  love  with 
Lady  Ashburton.  And  here  let  us  mark  in  passing 
an  illustration  of  the  unblushing  inconsistency  of  our 
informant.  "  That  Carlyle  should  have  behaved 
nobly,"  he  writes,  "  under  such  circumstances  [that 
is  in  rejecting  Lady  Ashburton's  advances]  seemed 
extremely  likely  to  me,"  and  in  the  next  paragraph 
but  one  he  represents  Carlyle  as  behaving  with 
detestable  meanness  in  making  love  to  his  friend's 
wife  at  the  very  time  when  he  was  accepting  favours 
at  that  friend's  hand.  This  is  indeed  characteristic 
of  Froude's  handling  of  Carlyle.  He  presents  him 
to  us  as  a  bundle  of  contrarieties  and  incompatibili- 
ties and  mutually  destructive  elements  such  as  never 
lodged  together  in  one  human  body. 

It  was  not  until  187 1,  according  to  Froude  (or  1873, 
as  we  shall  hereafter  show),  when  he  read  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle's  Journal,  that  the  true  inwardness  of  the  Ash- 
burton affair  dawned  on  him.  There,  he  says,  was 
the  explanation  of  much  of  the  bitterness  that  ap- 
peared in  her  letters;  but  writing  in  Cuba  in  1887 
he  seems  to  have  forgotten  what  he  wrote  in  London 
in  1883,  for  then  he  unequivocally  stated,  in  his  note 
to  the  Journal,  that  he  did  not  understand  it  and 
submitted  it  to  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury,  who  sup- 
plied him  with  the  version  of  the  Ashburton  affair, 
which  he  now  adopts  and  sets  forth  as  his  own. 

52 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Froude  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  the  Ashbur- 
ton  affair.  Mrs.  Carlyle's  Journal  remained  dark  to 
him.  He  invited  Miss  Jewsbury  to  let  in  the  light 
on  it,  and  she  burned  magnesium  and  strontium 
with  dazzling  and  blinding  effect.  He  unhesitatingly 
accepted  this  variety  artist's  interpretation  of  what 
was  cryptic  in  the  Journal,  and  in  "  My  Relations 
with  Carlyle"  he  presents  it  as  his  own  without  even 
mentioning  Miss  Jewsbury 's  name,  and  conveys  the 
idea  that  it  was  in  the  papers  placed  in  his  hands 
that  he  himself  found  the  solution  of  the  Ashburton 
mystery.  There  he  discovered,  he  would  have  us 
believe,  that  "  Carlyle  had  sate  at  the  feet  of  the  fine 
lady,  adoring  and  worshipping,  had  made  himself  the 
plaything  of  her  caprices,  had  made  Lady  Ashburton 
the  object  of  the  same  idolatrous  homage  which  he 
had  once  paid  to  herself"  [his  wife]. 

That  is  a  grave  charge  to  bring  against  "  a  great 
spiritual  teacher,"  and  on  the  face  of  it  somewhat 
improbable  as  brought  against  a  man  between  fifty 
and  sixty  years  of  age,  and  of  such  a  constitution 
that  according  to  Froude  he  ought  never  to  have 
married.  But  let  Froude  call  his  witnesses.  He 
has  but  one.  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury  steps  into 
the  box.  "  This  flimsy  tatter  of  a  creature,"  as 
Carlyle  called  her,  this  hysterical  woman,  this  prac- 
tised romancer,  this  volume  of  "  exaggerations  and 
affectations  and  got-up  feelings,"  is  the  sole  prop  of 
Froude's  case.  And  how  did  he  take  her  evidence? 
Not  by  asking  her  what  she  knew  of  the  affair,  but 
by  sending  her  Mrs.  Carlyle's  private  Journal,  which 
she  had  kept  locked  up  and  never  meant  human  eye 

53 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

to  see,  and  asking  her  to  read  for  him  between  the 
Hnes  of  the  obscure  passages.  The  task  was  no 
doubt  a  congenial  one  to  Miss  Jewsbury.  She  gave 
wings  to  her  fancy.  She  had  never  been  admitted 
to  the  real  confidence  of  that  sensible  and  discreet 
woman  Mrs.  Carlyle,  but  she  had  no  hesitation  in 
imagining  that  she  had  been  behind  the  scenes  and 
had  seen  the  actors  in  undress.  She  accused  Carlyle 
of  having  lingered  *'  in  the  primrose  path  of  dalliance  " 
and  of  being  "a  philosopher  in  chains"  to  a  great 
and  capricious  lady,  and  so  subjecting  his  poor  wife 
to  "  sufferings  real,  intense,  and  at  times  too  grievous 
to  be  borne." 

Froude  instantly  and  implicitly  accepted  Miss 
Jewsbury 's  key  to  the  Ashburton  cypher.  Forster's 
alleged  story  had  to  be  put  aside,  and  here,  again, 
crops  up  Froude's  inaccuracy.  "  What,"  he  asks, 
"  was  the  meaning  of  Forster's  story?  He  died  soon 
after,  and  I  had  no  opportunity  of  asking  him."  But 
Miss  Jewsbury  supplied  her  key  to  the  Ashburton 
cypher  either  in  187 1  or  1873,  and  Forster  died  in 
1876,  and  was  vigorous  to  the  last,  and  yet  in  three  or 
four  years  Froude  could  not  find  an  opportunity  of 
asking  him  to  explain  an  entirely  erroneous  story,  for 
which  he  had  made  himself  responsible,  and  to  clear 
up  a  point  vitally  affecting  the  character  of  the  great 
man  whose  life  he  [Froude]  had  undertaken  to  write, 
and  to  write,  as  he  is  always  assuring  us,  with  such 
scrupulous  fidelity.  Was  the  penny  post  suspended  ? 
Could  he  not  walk  a  mile,  or  spare  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.?  The  truth  is  Miss  Jewsbury 's  theory  suited 
him  exactly,  being  in  harmony  with  his  preconceived 

54 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

opinion,  and  he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  submit 
it  to  any  close  scrutiny.  Carlyle  Hved  for  seven  years 
after  Froude  was  put  in  possession  of  it,  and  surely, 
in  common  justice,  he  ought  to  have  been  asked  to 
confirm  or  contradict  it.  "  I  tried  once,"  says  Froude, 
"  to  approach  the  subject  with  Carlyle  himself,  but 
he  shrank  from  it  with  such  signs  of  distress  that  I 
could  not  speak  to  him  about  it  again."  Strange 
conduct  this  on  the  part  of  a  man  who  during  four 
years  never  walked  out  wath  Froude — and  they 
walked  out  together  twice  weekly — without  drifting 
back,  so  Froude  tells  us,  into  a  pathetic  cry  of  sor- 
row over  things  that  were  irreparable,  and  giving 
expression  to  a  repentance  that  was  deep  and  pas- 
sionate. One  would  have  thought  that  it  would  have 
been  a  relief  to  him  to  have  made  a  clean  breast 
of  it  to  his  father  confessor.  A  repentance  that 
consists  of  Pharisaical  generalities,  and  does  not 
condescend  to  particulars,  is  not  of  the  noble  type 
which  Froude  affirms  Carlyle's  to  have  been ;  and  it 
seems  probable,  therefore,  that  Froude's  approach  to 
Carlyle  on  the  Ashburton  affair  must  be  put  down 
amongst  the  imaginary  conversations,  more  especially 
as  with  others,  Carlyle  never  in  his  declining  years 
manifested  the  slightest  disinclination  to  talk  about 
his  friendship  with  the  Ashburtons.  Never  did 
Carlyle,  in  conversation  or  in  his  writings,  even  in 
the  gloomiest  hours  of  his  bereavement,  express  the 
least  sorrow  or  contrition,  or  blame  himself  in  con- 
nection with  his  intimacy  with  Lady  Ashburton. 
He  always  refers  to  it  with  pride ;  and  there  is,  as 
Venables  had  justly  remarked,  "a  total  unconscious- 

55 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

ness  of  any  questionable  conduct  or  feeling  "  on  his 
own  part.  "  Least  of  all,  does  he  regret  the  long- 
continued  friendship  which  at  one  time  caused  her 
[Mrs.  Carlyle]  so  much  discontent."  No  one  can 
read  Carlyle 's  moving  note  on  the  death  of  Lady 
Ashburton,  without  perceiving  that  he  looked  back 
on  his  friendship  with  her  with  no  qualms  of  con- 
science:— "  Monday,  4th  May,  4>^  p.m.,  at  Paris,  died 
Lady  Ashburton:  a  great  and  irreparable  sorrow  to 
me;  yet  with  some  beautiful  consolations  in  it,  too." 
In  annotating  his  wife's  letters  after  her  death,  when 
in  the  full  flood  of  his  grief,  and  when  remorse  for 
any  wrong  done  to  her,  if,  as  Froude  affirms,  it  visited 
him,  must  have  been  tormenting  his  soul,  he  could 
thus  write  of  the  woman  whom  Froude  points  to  as 
her  rival  in  his  affections.  "  The  most  queen-like 
woman  I  had  ever  known  or  seen.  The  honour  of 
her  constant  regard  had,  for  ten  years  back,  been 
amongst  my  proudest  and  most  valued  possessions — 
lost  now;  gone — for  ever  gone!  ...  In  no  society, 
English  or  other,  had  I  seen  the  equal  or  the  second 
of  this  great  lady  that  has  gone ;  by  nature  and  by 
cwXtUYe^  facile prmceps,  she,  I  think,  of  all  great  ladies 
I  have  ever  seen."  In  Mrs.  Carlyle,  a  great  change 
took  place  in  her  view  of  Lady  Ashburton  after  that 
lady's  death.  She  was  then,  in  1857,  recovering  in 
some  measure  from  the  morbid  melancholy  which 
was  at  its  acme  in  1856,  and  the  scales  fell  from  her 
eyes.  Regarding  Lady  Ashburton's  funeral,  which 
Carlyle  attended,  she  wrote,  "  All  the  men  who  used 
to  compose  a  sort  of  Court  for  her  were  there  hi 
tearsl'     As  to  her  first  visit  to  the  Grange  after  Lady 

56 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Ashburton's  death,  she  wrote:  "The  same  house- 
hold of  visitors;  the  same  elaborate  apparatus  for 
living;  and  the  life  of  the  whole  thing  gone  out  of  it! 
Acting  a  sort  of  Play  of  the  Past,  with  the  principal 
Part  suppressed,  obliterated  by  the  stern  hand  of 
Death."  She  actually  accepted  from  Lord  Ashbur- 
ton  some  of  the  belongings  of  his  late  wife,  which  she 
could  scarcely  have  done  had  her  feelings  towards  her 
continued  as  they  were  in  1856.  "  I  wish  you  would 
thank  Lord  Ashburton  for  me,"  she  wrote  to  her 
husband  from  Haddington;  "  I  couldn't  say  anything 
about  his  kindness  in  giving  me  those  things  which 
she  had  been  in  the  habit  of  wearing;  I  felt  so  sick 
and  so  like  to  cry,  that  I  am  afraid  I  seemed  quite 
stupid  and  ungrateful  to  him." 

But  if  Froude  hesitated  to  sound  Carlyle  on  the 
Ashburton  affair  and  could  not  in  three  years  find 
time  to  interrogate  Forster,  there  were,  at  the  time 
Miss  Jewsbury's  version  of  it  was  communicated  to 
him,  various  other  ways  of  getting  at  the  truth.  Miss 
Mary  Aitken,  whom  he  at  that  time  addressed  in  his 
letters  as  "  My  dear  Mary,"  was  living  with  her  uncle, 
and  had  access  to  all  his  papers  and  could  have  helped 
him.  Dr.  John  Carlyle,  who  knew  more  than  any 
one  else  of  what  the  married  life  of  his  brother  and 
sister-in-law  had  been,  was  alive  and  could  have  settled 
the  point.  The  second  Lady  Ashburton  was  alive, 
and  could  have  resolved  his  difHculties.  To  not  one 
of  these  did  he  apply.  Not  one  of  them  is  he  able 
to  quote.  To  none  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  friends  at  the 
time  of  the  Ashburton  affair,  save  Miss  Jewsbury, 
did  he  apply  for  enlightenment.     He  buttoned  up  in 

57 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

his  breast  that  lady's  precious  disclosure  and  reserved 
it  iov  post-mortem  application.  True,  he  says,  "  there 
are  in  existence,  or  there  were,  masses  of  extrava- 
gant letters  of  Carlyle's  to  the  great  lady  as  ecstatic 
as  Don  Quixote's  to  Dulcinea,"  but  he  does  not  say 
that  he  has  ever  seen  these  letters,  or  has  derived 
his  knowledge  of  their  nature,  from  any  one  who 
has  seen  them.  It  ought  to  be  a  sufficient  answer 
to  Froude's  statement  to  recall  the  fact  that  these 
letters  passed,  on  Lady  Ashburton's  death,  into  the 
hands  of  her  husband,  who  read  them,  and  cannot 
have  thought  them  offensive  in  any  way,  as  he 
continued  one  of  Carlyle's  warmest  friends  until  his 
life's  end;  that  on  his  death  they  were  read  by  his 
widow  Louisa,  Lady  Ashburton,  who  also  maintained 
an  uninterrupted  friendship  with  the  writer.  A 
little  while  before  Carlyle's  death,  Louisa,  Lady  Ash- 
burton, told  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  that  she  had 
burnt,  or  was  going  to  burn,  the  letters,  that  they 
were  friendly,  intimate  letters,  expressive  of  admira- 
tion, but  in  no  way  transgressing  proper  bounds.  If 
in  one  of  these  letters,  as  Froude  declares,  Carlyle 
asked  Lady  Ashburton  not  to  tell  his  wife  of  some 
visit  he  paid  her,  the  circumstance  is  susceptible  not 
merely  of  an  innocent  but  of  a  laudable  explanation, 
for  during  part  of  the  Ashburton  friendship,  his  wife 
was  in  her  morbid  jealousy,  feverishly  counting  his 
visits  to  Bath  House,  and  it  might  have  been  humane 
to  conceal  from  her  that  he  had  dined  there. 

But  if  Carlyle's  letters  to  Lady  Ashburton  have 
been  destroyed.  Lady  Ashburton's  replies  to  them 
have  been  preserved.    Carlyle  said  they  were  "  dry 

58 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

as  sticks,"  but  they  read  now  as  simple,  friendly, 
kindly  epistles.  In  not  one  of  them  is  there  any 
chiding  of  the  Quixotic  exuberance  of  the  correspon- 
dent, which  Froude  has  affirmed ;  in  not  one  is  there 
a  trace  of  the  imperious  mistress  to  whom  Carlyle  was 
a  passing  amusement  and  a  slave,  as  Froude  has 
phrased  it,  going  far  beyond  even  the  transcendental 
Miss  Jewsbury,  who  is  obliged  to  admit  that  any 
other  wife  than  Mrs.  Carlyle  "  would  have  laughed  at 
Mr.  Carlyle's  bewitchment  with  Lady  Ashburton." 
Froude  insinuated  that  Carlyle  was  extravagantly 
deluded,  and  having  drawn  the  contrast  that  Lady 
Ashburton  was  a  great  lady  of  the  world,  while 
"  Carlyle  with  all  his  genius  had  the  manners  to  the 
last  of  an  Annandale  peasant,"  he  recalls  an  instance 
of  a  peasant  of  genius  who  was  weak  enough  to 
believe  that  a  great  lady  who  had  taken  an  ad- 
miring interest  in  him,  under  analogous  circum- 
stances, wanted  to  marry  him.  All  this  is  designed 
to  bring  censure  and  derision  on  Carlyle,  and  all 
is  wide  of  the  mark.  Carlyle  was  proud  to  call 
himself  a  peasant's  son,  but  at  the  same  time  he 
had  some  good  Scottish  blood  in  his  veins.  Froude 
said,  and  he  must  have  forgotten  he  had  said  it, 
"  There  was  reason  to  believe  that  his  own  father 
was  the  actual  representative  of  the  Lords  of  Tor- 
thorwald ;  and  though  he  laughed  when  he  spoke  of 
it,  he  was  clearly  not  displeased  to  know  that  he  had 
noble  blood  in  him.  Rustic  as  he  was  in  habits,  dress 
and  complexion,  he  had  a  knightly,  chivalrous 
temperament,  and  fine  natural  courtesy;  another 
sure  sign  of  good  breeding  was  his  hand,  which  was 

59 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

small,  perfectly  shaped  with  long  fine  fingers  and 
aristocratic  finger  nails."  Venables,  too,  had  said, 
"  Notwithstanding  his  humble  birth  and  rustic  train- 
ing, he  was  keenly  sensible  to  refinement  of  character 
and  manner,  and  his  own  demeanour,  tho'  not 
conventional,  was  gracious  and  on  fit  occasions 
courtly."  "  My  recollections  of  him  are  of  almost 
uniform  geniality  and  unfailing  courtesy,  tho'  his 
cheerfulness  might  not  be  always  undisturbed." 
Carlyle's  manners  of  an  Annandale  peasant  did  not 
exclude  him  from  the  highest  circles  of  London 
Society,  and  were  assuredly  no  barrier  to  the  friend- 
ship of  that  great  Lady,  Lady  Ashburton,  which  was 
the  utmost  that,  in  her  case,  he  ever  aspired  to. 

Stripped  of  the  bedizenments  that  Froude  and  Miss 
Jewsbury  have  decked  it  in,  the  Ashburton  affair  is 
innocent  and  intelligible  enough.  It  was  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle  who  made  the  acquaintance  of  Lady  Ashburton 
in  the  first  instance,  when  she  formed  a  high  opinion 
of  her  merits,  describing  her  as  the  cleverest  woman 
she  had  ever  met,  full  of  energy  and  sincerity,  and 
with  an  excellent  heart ;  and  it  was  she  who  urged 
Carlyle  to  accept  the  invitations  which  Lord  Ashbur- 
ton, then  Mr.  Baring,  gave  him  to  his  town  and 
country  houses,  realising  the  advantages  which  might 
accrue  from  the  acquaintance  of  the  distinguished 
people  that  he  met  in  these  places.  Carlyle  was 
reserved  and  fastidious,  and,  had  he  declined  the 
hand  which  the  Ashburtons  held  out,  London  So- 
ciety of  the  better  sort  might  long  have  remained 
closed  to  him.    As  the  Ashburtons'  guest,  he  met 

on  equal  terms  men  of  rank  and  letters.    Until  the 

60 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

death  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  he  probably  entertained 
some  hope  of  entering  public  or  official  life,  and  it 
was  therefore  desirable  that  he  should  become  known 
to  the  leading  politicians  of  the  period.  He  took 
pleasure,  too,  legitimate  pleasure,  in  the  society  of 
the  brilliant  and  ambitious  woman,  so  full  of  intellec- 
tual gaiety  and  satirical  caprice,  who  presided  over 
the  Ashburton  circle ;  but  that  he  was  not,  as  Froude 
suggests,  an  interloper  in  that  circle,  paying  clandes- 
tine homage  to  its  mistress,  let  Lord  Houghton, 
writing  when  both  Lady  Ashburton  and  Carlyle  were 
dead,  attest:  "There  could,"  he  says,  "be  no  better 
guarantee  of  these  qualities  (a  joyous  sincerity  that 
no  conventionalities,  high  or  low,  could  restrain — a 
festive  nature  flowering  through  the  artificial  soil  of 
elevated  life)  than  the  constant  friendship  that  existed 
between  Lady  Ashburton  and  Carlyle — on  her  part 
one  of  filial  respect  and  duteous  admiration.  The 
frequent  presence  of  the  great  moralist  of  itself  gave  to 
the  life  of  Bath  House  and  The  Grange  a  reality  that 
made  the  most  ordinary  worldly  component  parts  of 
it  more  human  and  worthy  than  elsewhere." 

That  the  friendship  between  Carlyle  and  Lady 
Ashburton  never,  on  either  side,  drifted  into  extrava- 
gance, the  character  and  conduct  of  Lord  Ashburton 
are  a  sufficient  guarantee.  He  had  been  engaged  in 
vast  monetary  transactions  in  various  parts  of  the 
world ;  he  had,  as  Mr.  Bingham  Baring,  formed  part 
of  the  Administration  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1835. 
He  was  a  man  of  the  noblest  and  purest  purpose, 
with  an  entirely  unselfish  and  truthful  disposition, 

who,  while  manifesting  lover-like  delight  and  intellec- 

61 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

tual  wonder  in  the  display  of  his  wife's  genius  and 
gaiety,  maintained,  we  are  told,  a  quiet  authority 
over  her  in  all  the  serious  affairs  of  life.  Is  it  likely 
that  such  a  man  would  tolerate  the  slightest  indiscre- 
tion on  the  part  of  his  wife  or  of  Carlyle,  or  permit, 
under  his  roof,  anything  calculated  to  cause  just  pain 
and  anger  to  Mrs.  Carlyle,  for  whom  he  felt  the 
deepest  regard  ? 

In  the  early  days  the  Ashburton  friendship  was  a 
source  of  unalloyed  pleasure  to  Mrs.  Carlyle.  The 
invitations  to  Bath  House  or  Addiscombe  invariably 
included  her — unless  in  the  case  of  a  gentlemen's 
dinner-party — and  she  many  times  went  alone,  leaving 
her  husband  at  home.  But,  as  time  went  on,  a 
certain  jealousy  of  Lady  Ashburton  took  possession 
of  her  mind.  Lady  Ashburton  was  as  clever  a  con- 
versationalist as  she,  and  had  social  prestige  which 
gave  her  an  advantage,  and  Mrs.  Carlyle  could  not 
bear  to  be  outshone.  She  first  grudged  Lady  Ash- 
burton the  attention  and  admiration  she  commanded 
in  the  general  circle,  she  then  grudged  specifically 
the  attention  and  admiration  that  Carlyle  openly 
gave  her,  and  finally  she  got  it  into  her  head  that 
Carlyle  had  transferred  to  her  the  attention  and 
admiration  he  once  surrendered  to  his  wife,  and  was 
in  love  with  her.  Then  it  was  that  in  pathetic,  some- 
times in  bitter  accents,  she  gave  utterance  to  the 
morbid  jealousy  that  consumed  her — 

"Oh,  waly,  waly,  love  is  bonnie 
A  little  while  when  it  is  new ; 
But  when  it's  auld 
It  waxeth  cauld, 
And  melts  away  like  morning  dew." 
62 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

"  Beautiful  verse,  sweet  and  sad,  like  barley-sugar 
dissolved  in  tears.  About  the  morning  dew,  how- 
ever! I  would  say,  'Goes  out  like' candle  snuff' 
would  be  a  truer  simile ;  only  that  would  not  suit  the 
rhyme." 

This  last  phase,  however,  morbid  jealousy,  only 
came  when  Mrs.  Carlyle's  health  had  given  way,  and 
was  indeed  but  a  sign  of  mental  disorder.  It  may 
be  laid  down  as  axiomatic  in  medical  psychology, 
that  when  a  highly  neurotic  and  childless  woman, 
at  a  critical  period  of  life,  takes  to  morphia,  morbid 
jealousy  will  develop  itself.  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  highly 
neurotic  and  childless,  and  at  a  critical  period  of  life 
she  became  addicted  to  morphia  and  other  drugs, 
and  ultimately  developed  morbid  jealousy  of  her 
husband.  No  medical  man  can  look  carefully  into 
her  case  without  being  convinced  that  she  suffered 
from  neurasthenia  and  climacteric  melancholia,  and 
that  the  piteous  outcries  of  the  Journal,  which  Froude, 
guided  by  Miss  Jewsbury,  accepted  as  proofs  of  her 
husband's  perfidy  and  cruelty,  were  really  but  the 
empty  ejaculations  of  her  disordered  feelings.  Only 
the  husband  who  has  gone  through  the  ordeal  of 
living  for  years  with  a  wife  emotionally  deranged, 
but  intellectually  clear  as  Mrs.  Carlyle  was,  can 
realise  what  Carlyle  must  have  endured,  at  a  time, 
too,  when  he  was  struggling  and  almost  sinking 
under  a  heavy  task.  His  sympathetic  gentleness 
and  forbearance  are  beyond  all  praise.  Froude  hav- 
ing thrown  off  all  constraint,  now  declares  that  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  "  ashamed  and  indignant  at  the  unworthy 
position  in  which  her  husband  was  placing  himself, 

63 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Rinaldo  in  the  bower  of  Armida  or  Hercules  spin- 
ning silks  for  Omphale."  It  must  have  escaped  his 
memory  that  he  had  formerly  written  "  Carlyle's  let- 
ters during  all  this  period  [the  Ashburton  affair 
period]  are  uniformly  tender  and  affectionate,  and 
in  them  was  his  true  self,  if  she  could  but  have 
allowed  herself  to  see  it." 

The  Ashburton  affair  was  truly,  as  Froude  remarks, 
the  cause  of  much  heartburning  and  misery  at  Cheyne 
Row,  but  it  was  so  only  because  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
diseased  fancies  fastened  upon  it,  as  they  would  have 
fastened  on  something  else  had  Carlyle  broken  with 
the  Ashburtons  altogether.  Froude  has  wholly 
misunderstood  it,  has  published  abroad  the  midnight 
mutterings  of  a  sick  woman,  and  has  based  on  them 
discreditable  reflections  on  her  long-suffering  hus- 
band. That  Carlyle  took  the  correct  view  of  his 
wife's  condition  is  clear,  for  looking  back  on  it  in 
1866,  he  ascribed  the  dispiritment  and  unhappiness 
of  his  wife  "  chiefly  to  the  deeper  downbreak  of  her 
own  poor  health,  which  from  this  time  [1856,  the  date 
of  the  Journal] ,  as  I  now  see  better,  continued  its 
advance  upon  the  citadel  or  nervous  system." 

But  bad  as  in  Froude's  sight  the  Ashburton  affair 
was,  something  worse  remained  behind.  Carlyle  "  had 
said  in  his  Journal  that  there  was  a  secret  connected 
with  him  unknown  to  his  closest  friends,"  and  without 
a  knowledge  of  which  no  true  biography  was  possible ; 
and  so,  when  selected  as  his  biographer,  Froude  set 
himself  to  find  out  this  secret,  which  if  unearthed  must 
necessarily  influence  him  in  all  he  might  say.  He  had 
no  doubt  from  the  first  that  it  was  connected  with  some 

64 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

moral  delinquency,  and  how  wildly  awry  he  went  in 
his  reading  of  Carlyle's  papers  may  be  best  shown 
by  quoting  the  passage  in  the  Journal,  and  the  only 
passage,  in  which  the  so-called  secret  is  referred  to. 
It  is  dated  29th  December,  1848,  and  runs  as  follows: 
"  Darwin  said  to  Jane,  the  other  day  in  his  quizzing- 
serious  manner,  'Who  will  write  Carlyle's  'Life'?' 
The  word  reported  to  me,  set  me  thinking  how 
impossible  it  was  and  would  for  ever  remain,  for  any 
creature  to  write  my  '  Life' ;  the  ^-^z^/" elements  of  my 
little  destiny  have  all  along  lain  deep  below  view  or 
surmise,  and  never  will  or  can  be  known  to  any  son 
of  Adam.  I  would  say  to  my  biographer,  if  any  fool 
undertook  such  a  task,  'Forbear,  poor  fool;  let  no 
life  of  me  be  written;  let  me  and  my  bewildered 
wrestlings  lie  buried  here,  and  be  forgotten  swiftly  of 
all  the  world.  If  thou  write,  it  will  be  mere  delusions 
and  hallucinations.  The  confused  world  never  under- 
stood, nor  will  understand,  me  and  my  poor  affairs ; 
not  even  the  persons  nearest  me  could  guess  at  them ; 
— nor  was  it  found  indispensable ;  nor  is  it  now^  for 
any  but  an  idle  purpose,  profitable,  were  it  even 
possible.  Silence,  and  go  thy  ways  elsewhither.'" 
To  the  common  man,  to  say  nothing  of  the  student 
of  Carlyle's  writings,  but  one  interpretation  of  this 
is  possible.  It  refers  not  to  one  secret  but  to  many 
— to  the  bewildered  wrestlings  of  the  writer's  soul 
with  the  mysteries  of  being,  to  those  incommuni- 
cable stirrings  that  agitate  the  depths  of  every  human 
heart.  It  is  but  a  variant  of  what  Carlyle  has  said 
many  times  in  his  books  about  the  sacramental 
nature  of  life,  and  the  barrier  that  must  always  shut 
5  65 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

out  one  human  being  from  another.     But  that  would 

not  do  for  Froude;   he  detected  a  personal  secret 

in   this  passage,  and  determined  to  ferret  it  out. 

And  help  came  to  him  in  that  daughter  of  Eve, 

Miss  Jewsbury,  who  at  once  detected  what  Carlyle 

had  said  no  son  of  Adam  could  find  out,  and  made 

patent  what  he  had  thought  not  even  the  persons 

nearest  him — therefore    not    even  his  wife — could 

guess  at.     Purely  in  the  interests  of  frank  biography, 

Miss  Jewsbury,  hearing  that  Froude  was    to  write 

Carlyle's  life,  hurried   to  him   and    disclosed    that 

"  Carlyle  was  one  of  those  persons  who  ought  never 

to  have  married,"  and,  like  a  flower  that  perishes  in 

the  blossoming,  Froude  tells  us,  she  died  soon  after. 

But  of  course,  Froude  is  wrong,  for,  as  a  matter  of 

fact,  she  survived  seven  years  after  her  revelation. 

This  unmarried  lady  went  to  Froude,  who  was  not 

a  medical  man,  and  soiled  the  memory  of  the  man 

towards  whom  she  had  professed  undying  gratitude, 

and  Froude  is  not  ashamed  to  say  that  she  entered 

on  "  curious  details."     We  need  not  suppose  that  in 

doing  so  she  suffered  from  maidenly  embarrassment, 

or  was  suffused  with  blushes,  for  we  have  it  on  Mrs. 

Carlyle's  authority  that  she  had  herself  allowed  that 

she  had  "  absolutely  no  sense  of  decency,"  and  that 

her  tendency  towards  the  "  unmentionable  "  was  too 

strong  to  be  stayed.    She    informed   Froude   that 

Carlyle's  extraordinary  temper,  which   as  he  grew 

older  and  more  famous  became  more  violent  and 

overbearing,  was  a  consequence  of  his  organisation, 

that  Mrs.  Carlyle  never  forgave  the  injury  done  her 

in  her  marriage,  and  that  her  disappointed  longing 

66 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

for  children  had  been  at  the  bottom  of  all  their 
quarrels  and  unhappiness. 

"  I  have  never  been  curious  about  family  secrets," 
says  Froude,  "  and  have  always,  as  a  rule  of  my  life, 
declined  to  listen  to  communications  which  were  no 
business  of  mine,"  and  yet  he  seems  to  have  opened 
his  ears  widely  to  Miss  Jewsbury's  unpleasant  family 
communication.  That  communication  was  made  to 
him  in  1873,  and  must  have  been  always  present  to 
his  mind  while  writing  "  The  Life  of  Carlyle,"  and 
yet  in  that  life  he  says,  "  I  for  myself  concluded, 
though  not  till  after  long  hesitation,  that  there  should 
be  no  reserve,  and  therefore  I  have  practised  none." 
....  "  To  have  been  reticent  would  have  implied 
that  there  was  something  to  hide,  and  taking  Carlyle 
all  in  all,  there  never  was  a  man,  I  at  least  never 
knew  one,  whose  conduct  in  life  would  better  bear 
the  fiercest  light  that  could  be  thrown  upon  it."  .... 
"  There  ought  to  be  no  mystery  about  Carlyle,  and 
there  is  no  occasion  for  mystery."  And  the  man 
who  penned  these  sentences  in  1883  is  he  who  wrote 
in  1887,  "  The  worst  of  these  faults  [Carlyle 's  faults] 
I  have  concealed  hitherto,"  and  who  then  and  there 
placed  on  record,  evidently  with  a  view  of  its  being 
ultimately  uncovered  to  the  public  gaze,  a  mystery, 
which  he  had  concealed,  but  which  he  believed  had 
dominated  and  clouded  the  life  of  the  man  whose 
entirely  candid  biographer  he  professed  himself  to 
have  been. 

Delicacy  forbids  that  we  should  here  discuss 
Froude's  mystery  or  Miss  Jewsbury's  communica- 
tion.    They  have  been  fully  examined  in  the  pages 

67 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

of  a  medical  journal,  where  alone  they  could  be  prop- 
erly considered,  and  we  believe  we  may  say  they 
have  been  proved  to  have  been  the  offspring  of  a 
prurient  imagination.  There  is  no  truth  in  them. 
The  evidence  of  their  falsity  is  absolutely  conclusive. 
The  use  made  of  them  by  Froude  and  his  represen- 
tatives must  be  regarded  as  deplorable  and  a  stain  on 
English  literature.  There  was  no  corroboration  of 
Miss  Jewsbury's  statement.  Not  one  line  or  word 
could  she  point  to  in  all  her  confidential  correspond- 
ence with  Mrs.  Carlyle,  extending  over  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  or  in  Mrs.  Carlyle's  secret  Journal  and 
most  retired  communings  with  herself,  when  her 
bitterness  against  her  husband  was  at  its  height, 
giving  the  faintest  colour  to  the  disclosure.  It 
depended  entirely  on  her  recollection  of  alleged 
conversations  with  Mrs.  Carlyle,  to  support  which 
she  could  produce  no  collateral  evidence;  and  yet 
without  the  smallest  confirmation  Froude  accepted 
her  wild  and  whirling  words.  He  did  not  think  it 
necessary  to  apply  any  tests,  although  he  regarded 
the  statement,  not  as  a  bit  of  idle  talk,  but  as  of  vital 
moment,  and  allowed  it  to  tincture  and  control  his 
whole  biography  of  Carlyle.  The  substance  of  it 
has  been  concealed  until  now,  but  emanations  from 
it  have  been  for  years  floating  about.  Rumour  has 
given  currency  to  Miss  Jewsbury's  slander,  for  slander 
it  must  be  called ;  as,  rightly  or  wrongly,  a  certain 
degree  of  opprobrium  does  attach  to  the  organisation 
Miss  Jewsbury  ascribed  to  Carlyle,  with  which  certain 
intellectual  disabilities  are  often  associated. 

All  readers  of  Carlyle  must  allow  that  his  writings 

68 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

are  characterised  by  splendid  virility,  and  that  he 
was  every  inch  a  man.  The  Carlyles  lived  on  a 
higher  plane  than  Froude  conceived.  Their  married 
life  of  forty  years'  duration  was  essentially  beautiful. 
It  was  not  blessed  with  offspring.  It  was  chequered, 
as  all  married  lives  are,  with  cares,  anxieties  and 
sorrows,  it  was  ruffled  by  angry  breezes,  it  was 
shadowed  by  sickness,  which  at  one  time  gathered 
into  a  thunder-cloud,  but  it  was  irradiated  through- 
out by  the  pure  white  light  of  wholesome  human 
love. 

It  seems  almost  a  profanation  to  quote  from  the 
letters  which  passed  between  Carlyle  and  Jane  Welsh 
during  their  courtship,  and  between  Carlyle  and  his 
wife  during  the  early  years  of  their  married  life,  but 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  these  are  already  on 
record,  having  been  published  by  Froude,  and  they 
certainly  throw  a  pleasing  light  on  the  relations 
which  subsisted  between  them. 

During  their  engagement  Jane  Welsh  wrote  to 
Carlyle,  after  a  visit  to  Hoddam  Hill,  "  I  love  you, 
tenderly,  devotedly."  "  I  am  yours,  oh !  that  you 
knew  how  wholly  yours,"  in  response  to  some  ardent 
expression  of  Carlyle's,  whose  anticipations  of  matri- 
mony were  normal  enough.  "  Here,"  he  wrote  from 
Scotsbrig,  "are  two  swallows  in  the  corner  of  my 
window,  that  have  taken  a  house  this  summer;  and 
in  spite  of  drought  and  bad  crops  are  bringing  up  a 
family  together  with  the  highest  contentment  and 
unity  of  soul.  Surely,  surely  Jane  Welsh  and  Thomas 
Carlyle  here  as  they  stand  have  in  them  conjunctly 
the  wisdom  of  many  swallows.    Let  them  exercise 

69 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

it  then,  in  God's  name,  and  live  happy  as  these  birds 
of  passage  are  doing."  Mrs.  Carlyle's  letters  after 
the  marriage,  and  indeed  at  every  period  of  their 
married  life,  bear  no  trace  of  disappointment.  Six 
weeks  after  her  marriage  she  wrote  to  her  mother-in- 
law,  "  We  are  really  very  happy ;  and  when  he  falls 
upon  some  work  we  shall  be  still  happier.  Indeed, 
I  should  be  very  stupid  or  very  thankless,  if  I  did 
not  congratulate  myself  every  hour  of  the  day  on 
the  lot  which  it  has  pleased  Providence  to  assign  to 
me.  My  husband  is  so  kind,  in  all  respects  after  my 
own  heart ! " 

During  one  of  her  first  separations  from  him,  when 
visiting  her  mother  at  Templand,  she  addresses  him, 
"  Kindest  and  dearest  of  husbands.  Are  you  thinking 
you  are  never  to  see  my  sweet  face  any  more."*  .  .  . 
I  wish  I  were  back  to  see  it  and  to  give  you  a  kiss 
for  every  moment  I  have  been  absent.  .  .  .  Dearest, 
I  do  love  you.  God  bless  you,  my  Darling. — Ever ! 
ever  your  true  Wife." 

Again  she  wrote  from  Templand  within  two  years 
of  their  marriage, "  Goody,  Goody,  dear  Goody.  You 
said  you  would  weary,  and  I  do  hope  in  my  heart 
you  are  wearying.  It  will  be  so  sweet  to  make  it 
all  up  to  you  in  kisses  when  I  return.  You  will 
take  me  and  hear  all  my  bits  of  experiences,  and  your 
heart  will  beat  when  you  find  how  I  have  longed  to 
return  to  you."  Are  these  the  utterances  of  an 
amatively  disappointed  and  mortified  wife.? 

Carlyle's  letters  to  his  wife  are  not  less  tenderly 
and  naturally  affectionate  than  hers  to  him.     His 

first  letter  to  her,  when  they  were  parted  for  the  first 

70 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

time  since  their  marriage,  is  dated  i6th  April,  1827, 
and  begins  thus:  "Dearest  Wife, — What  strange 
magic  is  in  that  word,  now  that  for  the  first  time  I 
write  it  to  you.  I  promised  that  I  would  think  of  you 
sometimes ;  which  truly  I  have  done  many  times,  or 
rather  all  times,  with  a  singular  feeling  of  astonish- 
ment, as  if  a  new  light  had  risen  on  me  since  we 
parted,  as  if,  until  now,  I  had  never  known  how 
precious  my  own  dearest  little  Goody  was  to  me,  and 
what  a  real  angel  of  a  creature  she  was.  I  could  bet 
a  sovereign  that  you  love  me  twice  as  well  as  ever 
you  did ;  for  experience  in  this  matter  has  given  me 
insight.  Would  I  were  back  to  you,  and  my  own 
Jane's  heart  would  beat  against  her  husband's." 
Froude  prints  Mrs.  Carlyle's  reply  to  the  fore- 
going, but  with  characteristic  alterations.  He  puts 
a  cold  "you"  where  Mrs.  Carlyle  has  written 
"  Darling "  ;  he  puts  "  my  husband  "  where  Mrs. 
Carlyle  has  written  "  my  dearest  husband  " ;  and  he 
omits  the  amatory  ending,  "  God  keep  you,  my 
dear  good  husband.  Write  and  love  me.  Your 
own  Goody." 

Another  letter  in  early  wedlock  runs  thus:  "  Not 
unlike  what  the  drop  of  water  from  Lazarus's  finger 
might  have  been  to  Dives  in  the  flame  was  my  dear- 
est Goody's  letter  to  her  Husband  yesterday  after- 
noon. .  .  .  No,  I  do  not  love  you  in  the  least ;  only 
a  little  sympathy  and  admiratioji,  and  a  certain  esteem,^ 
nothing  more ! — O  my  dear,  best  wee  woman ! — But 
I  will  not  say  a  word  of  all  this  till  I  whisper  it  in 
your  ear  with  my  arms  round  you."  Is  this  the  lan- 
guage of  an  impotent  man  addressing  the  woman  to 

71 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

whom  he  has  done  a  grievous  wrong  which  she  is 
bitterly  resenting? 

Miss  Ann  Carlyle  Aitken  and  Miss  Margaret  Car- 
lyle  Aitken,  now  Hving  in  Dumfries,  recall  that,  twice 
whilst  at  Craigenputtock,  Mrs.  Carlyle  consulted 
their  mother,  the  late  Mrs.  Aitken,  about  her  mater- 
nal hopes,  which  alas !  came  to  nought ;  and  the  late 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  when,  on  her  aunt's  death, 
she  became  her  uncle's  companion,  was  much  touched 
to  find  in  a  drawer  at  Cheyne  Row  a  little  bundle 
of  baby  clothes  made  by  Mrs.  Carlyle 's  own  hands. 
This  reminds  us  of  Carlyle 's  pathetic  and  significant 
allusion  in  the  "  Reminiscences  "  to  the  child's  chair 
which  his  wife  had  herself  used  when  young,  and 
kept  in  her  house  with  feelings  no  woman  can  fail  to 
understand.  "  Her  little  bit  of  a  first  chair,  its  wee, 
wee  arms,  etc.,  visible  to  me  in  the  closet  at  this 
moment,  is  still  here  and  always  was ;  I  have  looked  at 
it  hundreds  of  times,  from  of  old  with  many  thoughts. 
No  daughter  or  son  of  hers  was  to  sit  there ;  so  it 
had  been  appointed  us,  my  Darling.  I  have  no  Book 
thousandth-part  so  beautiful  as  Thou  ;  but  these  were 
our  only  'Children,' — and  in  a  true  sense  they  were 
verily  ours  ;  and  will  perhaps  live  some  time  in  the 
world,  after  we  are  both  gone ; — and  be  of  no  dam- 
age to  the  poor  brute  chaos  of  a  world,  let  us  hope ! 
The  Will  of  the  Supreme  shall  be  accomplished. 
Ameny 

In  the  epitaph  in  Haddington  Churchyard  Jane 

Welsh  is  described,  not  as  the  faithful  companion,  but 

as  "  the  spouse  of  Thomas  Carlyle,"  "  for  forty  years 

the  true  and  ever-loving  helpmate  of  her  husband." 

72 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Carlyle  was  a  true  man,  no  hypocrite  or  slave  to 
convention,  and  he  would  not  have  used  these  words 
had  Jane  Welsh  never  been  his  spouse  in  any  true 
sense,  but  his  ill-used  thrall  who  had  been  often  on 
the  point  of  leaving"  him. 

To  any  one  with  a  spark  of  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  Carlyle 's  long  and  passionate  mourning  for 
his  wife,  his  lonesome  visits  to  her  grave,  where  he 
knelt  down  and  reverently  kissed  the  green  mound, 
must  betoken  a  tenderer  tie  than  mere  platonic 
fellowship. 

A  word  may  be  said  on  one  or  two  of  the  deduc- 
tions drawn  by  Froude  from  Miss  Jewsbury's  extraor- 
dinary statement.  We  are  assured  that]  it  was  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  disappointed  longing  for  children  that  was 
at  the  bottom  of  all  the  domestic  unhappiness  and 
quarrels  at  Cheyne  Row.  How  much  exaggerated 
by  Froude  that  unhappiness  and  these  quarrels  were 
has  been  already  shown.  How  little  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
unfulfilled  maternal  hopes  had  to  do  with  any  asperi- 
ties that  did  exist,  may  now  be  indicated  merely  to 
illustrate  Froude's  incomprehension  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
character.  A  child  at  Cheyne  Row  would  have  been 
an  unspeakable  boon  and  blessing,  but  Mrs.  Carlyle 
had  probably  during  the  greater  part  of  her  life  there 
no  very  strong  desire  for  its  arrival.  In  the  early 
days  at  Craigenputtock  "  she  had  the  passions  of  her 
kind,"  and  longed  for  a  child,  but  it  was  only  when 
they  made  up  their  minds  that  there  was  not  likely 
to  be  a  family,  that  the  Carlyles  determined  to  re- 
move to  London,  and  there  Mrs.  Carlyle  soon  became 
involved  in  ambitious  projects,  with  the  fulfilment  of 

73 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

which  the  claims  of  the  nursery  must  have  interfered. 
Like  some  of  the  fashionable  women  of  the  day,  she 
became  more  alive  to  the  drawbacks  than  to  the 
pleasures  of  motherhood.  She  had  no  great  liking 
for  children,  and  there  is  not  to  be  found  in  her  writ- 
ings a  single  affectionate  reference  to  them.  She 
calls  them  "  wersh  gorbs  "  and  "  insipid  offsprings," 
and,  writing  to  Mrs.  Russell,  she  exclaimed,  "  Gra- 
cious! what  a  luck  I  had  no  daughters  to  guide." 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  want  of  chil- 
dren seriously  ruffled  Mrs.  Carlyle's  equanimity  at 
Cheyne  Row. 

Three  times  over  Froude  informs  us  that  Mrs. 
Carlyle  had  resolved  to  leave  her  husband.  "  One 
had  heard  that  she  had  often  thought  of  leaving 
Carlyle,  and  as  if  she  had  a  right  to  leave  him  if  she 
pleased."  "  She  had  often  resolved  to  leave  Carlyle. 
He,  of  course,  always  admitted  that  she  was  at  liberty 
to  go  if  she  pleased."  "  She  had  definitely  made  up 
her  mind  to  go  away,  and  even  to  marry  another 
person."  But,  in  order  to  marry  another  person,  she 
would  have  had  to  divorce  Carlyle,  or  obtain  a  decree 
of  nullity  of  marriage ;  and  with  his  inimitable  incon- 
sistency, a  little  further  on,  Froude  says,  "  She  would 
not  make  a  scandal  by  revealing  the  truth  and  dis- 
solving the  marriage,  but  once,  at  least,  she  had 
resolved  to  put  herself  out  of  the  way  altogether." 
Which  is  it  to  be,  desertion,  divorce  or  suicide? 
Froude  cannot  be  allowed  to  juggle  with  all  three. 
Mrs.  Carlyle  contemplated  suicide  even  before  her 
marriage,  and  many  times  after  it,  but  that  she  had 
ever,  as  is  alleged  by  Froude,  made  up  her  mind  to 

74 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

go  to  Scotland  by  sea  and  drop  off  the  stern  of  the 
steamer  cannot  be  believed.  It  is  one  of  Geraldine 
Jewsbury's  stories,  and  is,  of  course,  apocryphal. 
Mrs.  Carlyle  had  plenty  of  morphia  and  henbane  and 
prussic  acid  and  chloroform,  and  could  have  made 
away  with  herself,  without  going  to  sea,  of  which  she 
had  always  a  horror.  It  was  Froude's  lack  of  hu- 
mour, a  saving  quality — the  essence  of  which  is  sen- 
sibility; warm,  tender  fellow-feeling  with  all  forms  of 
existence — of  which  he  was  entirely  destitute,  that 
led  him  into  the  ridiculous  canard  about  Mrs.  Carlyle 
running  away  and  marrying  another  person ;  the  sole 
discoverable  origin  of  it  being  this  passage  in  one  of 
her  letters  to  Mrs.  Russell :  "  Do  be  so  good  as  to 
give  Mr.  Dobbie  an  emphatic  kiss  from  me,  for  if 
Mr.  C.  become  unendurable  with  his  eternal  Fred- 
erick, I  intend  running  away  with  Mr.  Dobbie  to  the 
backwoods,  or  wherever  he  likes."  If  Froude  had 
made  a  little  inquiry,  he  would  have  discovered  that 
Mr.  Dobbie  was  Mrs.  Russell's  father,  a  reverend 
gentleman  then  in  his  eightieth  year.  It  was  proba- 
bly lack  of  knowledge  that  betrayed  Froude  into  his 
accusation  against  Carlyle  of  cruelty,  in  retorting  to 
his  wife,  when  she  told  him  how  near  leaving  him 
she  had  been,  "  Well,  I  do  not  know  that  I  should 
have  missed  you;  I  was  very  busy  just  then  with  my 
Cromwell,"  words  which  hurt  her,  he  says,  more  than 
any  others  she  had  ever  heard  from  him.  But  if  we 
are  to  believe  all  Froude  has  told  us,  these  words 
were  mild,  compared  with  his  many  savage  onslaughts 
on  her,  and  the  truth  seems  to  be  that  Froude  has 
applied  to  Carlyle  and  his  wife  a  story  which  Carlyle 

75 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

used  to  tell,  and  at  which  his  wife  laughed  merrily. 
It  was  the  story  of  a  North  of  England  farmer,  whose 
wife,  with  whom  he  had  had  a  tiff,  left  him  and  went 
back  to  her  parents,  but  soon  tired  of  the  separation 
and  returned  home.  Meeting  her  husband,  she  ad- 
dressed him  thus:  "  I'se  back  again,  thou  sees!"  to 
which  her  husband  replied,  "Back  again?  I  never 
kenned  thou  was  away ! " 

That  Mrs.  Carlyle,  whatever  she  may  have  said  in 
her  tempestuous  moods,  ever  seriously  harboured 
the  idea  of  leaving  her  husband,  no  one  who  has 
conned  her  letters  will  believe.  In  1844,  before  there 
was  any  Lady  Ashburton  on  the  scene,  she  wrote  to 
him:  "  I  am  always  wondering  since  I  came  here  how 
I  can  even  in  my  angriest  moods  talk  about  leaving 
you  for  good  and  all;  for  to  be  sure,  if  I  were  to 
leave  you  to-day  on  that  principle,  I  should  need 
absolutely  to  go  back  to-morrow  to  see  how  you 
were  taking  it."  All  the  letters  written  both  by 
Carlyle  and  his  wife  during  their  temporary  sep- 
arations teem  with  affectionate  anticipations  of  re- 
union. 

Froude's  third  specific  charge  against  Carlyle  is 
that  he  used  personal  violence  to  his  wife.  Carlyle, 
he  tells  us,  when  examining  his  wife's  papers  after 
her  death,  "  found  a  remembrance  in  her  Diary  of 
the  blue  marks  which  in  a  fit  of  passion  he  had  once 
inflicted  on  her  arms.  .  .  .  As  soon  as  he  could  col- 
lect himself  he  put  together  a  memoir  of  her,  in 
which  with  deliberate  courage  he  inserted  the  in- 
criminating passages  (by  me  omitted)  of  her  Diary, 

the  note  of  the  blue  marks  among  them,  and  he 

76 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

added  an  injunction  of  his  own  that  however  stern 
and  tragic  that  record  might  be,  it  was  never  to  be 
destroyed." 

Now  all  this  is  fiction — a  tissue  of  ingeniously  con- 
cocted fiction,  and  we  can  only  suppose  that  in  writ- 
ing it  Froude  anticipated  that  when  his  "Apologia" 
was  given  to  the  world  there  would  be  no  one  who 
would  care  to  take  the  trouble  to  examine  too  mi- 
nutely into  the  foundation  of  his  plausible  tale.  He 
conveys  to  us,  that  it  was  from  Carlyle  he  derived  his 
knowledge  that  the  two  blue  marks  were  due  to  his 
violence,  and  yet  two  years  later  we  find  him  asking 
an  explanation  of  them  from  Miss  Jewsbury,  who  of 
course  remembered  them  only  too  well,  "  The  marks 
were  made  by  personal  violence,"  said  she. 

It  is  in  itself  suspicious  that  Froude  does  not  quote 
the  exact  words  of  the  incriminating  passage  in  the 
Diary.  We  are  able  to  supply  this  omission.  This 
was  the  entry.  "  26th  June.  Nothing  to  record  to- 
day but  two  blue  marks  on  the  wrist."  That  is  all. 
The  previous  entry  for  24th  June  records  a  visit  to 
Kensington  Palace  to  see  the  old  German  pictures, 
and  a  family  party  at  Lady  Charlotte  Portal's  at 
which  she  was  accompanied  by  Mr.  Carlyle.  The 
following  entry  for  June  27th  records  a  visit  to 
Hampstead  with  Miss  Jewsbury  and  a  dinner  at  the 
"  Spaniards."  It  will  be  observed  that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
does  not  say  that  the  blue  marks  on  her  wrist  {wrist, 
be  it  noted,  not  "  armsl'  as  Froude  has  it,  an  impor- 
tant distinction),  were  caused  by  her  husband  or  give 
any  hint  as  to  how  they  came  there.  And  that  Car- 
lyle, after  an  interval  of  ten  years,  should,  on  reading 

77 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

the  Diary,  have  connected  the  entry  with  personal 
violence  of  his  own  and  have  made  confession  to 
Froude,  and  insisted  on  the  retention  of  the  incrimi- 
nating passage,  is  incredible. 

The  Memoir  which  Froude  says  as  soon  as  he  could 
collect  himself,  he  put  together,  was  undertaken  on 
the  occasion  of  his  reading  Miss  Jewsbury's  "  little 
book  of  myths,"  reminiscent  of  Mrs.  Carlyle.  As 
soon  as  the  book  was  sent  to  him  by  Miss  Jewsbury, 
he  began  to  jot  down,  on  its  vacant  leaves,  his  cor- 
rections of  the  stories,  and  when  the  book  was  filled 
he  took  another  note  book,  which  had  been  his 
wife's,  and  went  on  writing  down  what  memories 
recurred  to  him  of  her  parentage,  girlhood,  and  life 
beside  him.  These  two  books  constitute  the  manu- 
script of  the  Memoir, — "  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,"  which 
was  part  of  the  "  Letters  and  Memorials,"  but  which 
Froude,  on  his  own  authority,  published  as  part  of 
the  "  Reminiscences."  The  so-called  incriminating 
passage  was  contained  in  the  later  portion  of  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  Journal,  which  alone  had  been  discovered 
at  the  time,  and  Carlyle  introduced  the  whole  of  this 
bodily  into  the  above-mentioned  note  book  which 
had  been  his  wife's,  at  the  proper  place  in  point  of 
time.  He  added  no  injunction  as  to  the  incriminat- 
ing passage,  but  he  prefaced  Mrs.  Carlyle's  Journal 
with  these  words:  "But  in  1856"  [it  was  in  1856 
that  the  Journal  with  the  so-called  incriminating  pas- 
sage was  written] ,  "  owing  to  many  circumstances — 
my  engrossment  otherwise  (sunk  in  Frederick,  in, 
etc.,  etc.,  far  less  exclusively,  very  far  less  than  she 
supposed,  poor  soul !) ; — and  owing  chiefly,  one  may 

78 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

fancy,  to  the  deeper  down-break  of  her  own  poor 
health,  which  from  this  time,  as  I  now  see  better, 
continued  its  advance  upon  the  citadel,  or  nervous 
system,  and  intrinsically  grew  worse: — in  1856,  too 
evidently,  to  whatever  owing,  my  Darling  was  ex- 
tremely miserable!  Of  that  year  there  is  a  bit  of 
private  diary,  by  chance  left  unburnt ;  found  by  me 
since  her  death,  and  not  to  be  destroyed,  however 
tragical  and  sternly  sad  are  parts  of  it.  She  had 
written,  I  sometimes  knew  (though  she  would  never 
show  to  me  or  to  mortal  any  word  of  them),  at  differ- 
ent times,  various  bits  of  diary ;  and  was  even  at  one 

time  upon  a  kind  of  autobiography  (had  not stept 

into  it  with  swine's  foot,  most  intrusively,  though 
without  ill  intention — finding  it  unlocked  one  day; — 
and  produced  thereby  an  instantaneous  burning  of 
it ;  and  of  all  like  it  which  existed  at  that  time).  Cer- 
tain enough,  she  wrote  various  bits  of  diary  and 
private  record,  unknown  to  me ;  but  never  anything 
so  sore,  down-hearted,  harshly  distressed  and  sad  as 
this  (right  sure  am  I!), — which  alone  remains  as 
specimen." 

Now  what  is  there  here  about  "  blue  marks,"  "  in- 
criminating passage,"  or  "bit  of  passion"?  The 
words  "  tragical  and  sternly  sad  "  are  not  applied  by 
Carlyle  to  any  incriminating  passage  but  to  the  whole 
Journal,  or  parts  of  it,  and  the  real  significance  of  the 
Journal,  as  an  outcome  of  nervous  and  mental  disor- 
der, he  had  been  compelled  to  recognise.  He  puts 
it  as  euphemistically  as  possible,  but  he  cannot  shut 
his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  his  wife  was  morbidly  mel- 
ancholic at  the  time.     In  June,  1856,  she  was  labour- 

79 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

ing  under  profound  despondency,  and  Froude,  in  his 
letter  of  intimidation  of  April  20th,  1886,  in  which  he 
tkreatened  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  with  the  publica- 
tion of  "  the  blue  marks,"  adds :  "  I  know  also  that  on 
this  or  on  some  other  similar  occasion  Mrs.  Carlyle 
had  made  up  her  mind  to  destroy  herself."  He 
knew  very  well — for  in  violation  of  decent  reserve  he 
had  himself  published  the  fact — that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
had  on  several  occasions  made  up  her  mind  to  de- 
stroy herself :  he  knew  very  well  that  she  was  at  this 
time  taking  morphia,  which  is  a  deliriant  as  well  as 
an  anodyne  and  soporific:  he  knew  very  well  that 
she  passed  through  what  her  husband  called  "  a  des- 
perate time  "  and  Dr.  Blakiston  "  hysterical  mania," 
and  yet  it  never  occurred  to  him  that  two  blue  marks 
on  the  wrist  might  have  come  in  the  humane  exer- 
cise of  necessary  restraint.  Could  "  two  blue  marks 
on  the  wrist"  suggest  an  assault  to  any  one  but 
Froude?  What  warrant  had  he  for  saying  that  Car- 
lyle caused  them  in  any  way?  Mrs.  Carlyle  does  not 
say  so.  Nowhere  in  her  letters  or  diaries  is  there  the 
remotest  suggestion  of  such  a  thing.  She  under- 
stood afterwards  how  ill  she  had  been  at  this  time, 
for  exactly  a  month  after  the  surmised  assault  we  find 
her  writing  to  Mrs.  Russell:  "  I  was  very  poorly  in- 
deed when  I  left  home  [in  the  middle  of  July],  but  I 
am  quite  another  creature;  on  the  top  of  this  Hill 
with  the  sharp  Fife  breezes  about  me."  At  the  same 
time,  July  29th,  she  is  writing  to  her  brutal  assailant, 
her  husband :  "  Of  course  I  am  sad  at  times,  at  all 
times  sad  as  death,  but  that  I  am  used  to  and  don't 

mind.    And  as  for  the  sickness,  it  is  quite  gone  since 

80 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

the  morning  I  left  Chelsea."  That  the  two  blue 
marks  on  the  wrist  business  cannot  have  had  any 
very  serious  consequences  may  be  inferred  from  the 
facts  that  within  one  week  of  the  record  of  them  she 
gave  sitting  for  her  portrait,  went  through  the  ordeal 
of  the  dentist's  chair,  and  attended  "  the  most  mag- 
nificent ball  of  the  season."  It  may  indeed  well  be 
doubted,  whether  the  blue  marks  had  any  such  sig- 
nificance as  the  melodramatic  Froude  has  attributed 
to  them,  and  ought  not  to  be  regarded  in  a  comic 
rather  than  a  tragic  light.  Mrs.  Carlyle  has  else- 
where chronicled  similar  marks  on  Carlyle's  skin 
caused  by  the  operations  of  her  bete  noir,  the  bug,  if 
an  insect  may  be  so  designated,  which,  in  spite  of 
her  vigilance,  several  times  invaded  5,  Cheyne  Row, 
and  her  hunts  after  which  she  has  described  with  the 
exciting  realism  of  one  of  her  favourite  novelists, 
Fenimore  Cooper,  and  the  wrist  is  a  favourite  point 
of  attack  of  the  Cimex  Lectularius. 

Let  us  take  the  tale  of  the  blue  marks  seriously, 
however,  and  put  the  worst  possible  construction  on 
Mrs.  Carlyle's  words,  supposing  that  her  husband  in 
some  domestic  altercation  had  roughly  grasped  her 
wrist,  thus  causing  two  blue  marks  on  her  sensitive 
and  very  bruisable  skin.  It  is  believable  that  such 
an  incident — not  unknown  even  in  well-regulated 
families — would  rankle  in  his  mind,  after  an  interval 
of  ten  years,  during  the  whole  of  which  his  wife  had 
given  copious  expression  of  her  gratitude  for  his  un- 
remitting gentleness  and  loving-kindness,  and  fill  his 
declining  days  with  remorse  as  Froude  afifirms?     Is 

it  believable  that  if,  as  Froude  asserts,  it  was  this 
6  81 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

incident,  that  in  the  after  years,  caused  him  so  much 
pain,  he  would  not  have  mentioned  it  amongst  all 
the  unsparing  self-reproaches  in  which  he  indulged? 
Never  once  does  he  refer  to  it  in  his  most  racking 
retrospective  writings.  Never  once  did  he  mention 
it  to  his  niece,  who  was  his  confidant  in  his  darkest 
days.  According  to  Froude,  Carlyle's  nobility  of 
nature  was  conspicuously  exhibited  in  the  penitential 
reparation  he  resolved  to  make  to  his  wife's  memory. 
But  was  this  man,  with  his  hatred  of  hypocrisy  and 
fearless  sincerity,  likely  to  content  himself  with  half 
an  expiation  ?  Was  he  likely  to  parade  his  peccadil- 
los and  hide  away  his  mortal  sins.?  Is  it  not  certain 
that  if  he  had  been  guilty  of  any  act  of  violence 
towards  his  wife,  he  would  have  repented  in  dust  and 
ashes  and  confessed  his  fault  ?  The  fact  that,  while 
seizing  on  every  allusion  in  his  wife's  writings  in 
connection  with  which  he  could  upbraid  himself,  he 
passed  over  the  entry  as  to  the  "  two  blue  marks  on 
the  wrist"  without  comment,  is  a  sufficient  proof 
that  it  had  no  sinister  meaning  for  him,  and  that 
all  that  Froude  says  about  it  must  have  been 
drawn  from  his  imaginary  conversations.  The 
words  that  spring  to  one's  pen  on  reviewing  this 
attempt  to  brand  Carlyle  as  a  brute  are  best  left  un- 
written. 

As  brutality  and  selfishness  were,  according  to 
Froude,  the  keynotes  of  Carlyle's  youth  and  prime, 
remorse  gave  the  tonality  to  his  declining  years. 
When  his  wife  was  no  more,  says  his  gentle  biogra- 
pher, he  saw  "  that  he  had  made  her  entirely  miser- 
able ;  that  she  had  sacrificed  her  life  to  him ;  and  that 

82 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

he  had  made  her  a  wretched  return  for  her  devotion. 
.  .  .  For  the  next  four  years  I  never  walked  with 
him  without  his  recurring  to  a  subject  which  was 
never  absent  from  his  mind.  His  conversation,  how- 
ever it  opened,  ahvays  drifted  back  into  a  pathetic 
cry  of  sorrow  over  things  which  Vv^ere  now  irrepar- 
able." He  suffered  "  an  agony  of  remorse  for  a  long 
series  of  faults  which  now  for  the  first  time  he  saw  in 
their  true  light."  All  which  shows  that  Froude  did 
not  understand  the  meaning  of  the  word  remorse  as 
employed  by  Carlyle,  and  was  incapable  of  entering 
into  his  feelings.  "  Between  the  Carlyles  and  Mr. 
Froude,"  as  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell  justly  observes, 
"  there  flowed  both  Tweed  and  Trent,  and  the  his- 
tory of  the  whole  world."  But  Froude,  unconscious 
of  this,  tried  to  make  his  shallow  notions  the  plum- 
met of  a  nature  infinitely  deeper  than  his  own.  It 
can  be  demonstrated  beyond  dispute,  that  what 
Froude  called  remorse  was  simply  poignant  grief,  in 
the  guise  it  so  often  assumes,  in  the  fine-fibred  and 
magnanimous.  Carlyle  was  not  maddened  by  the 
stings  of  conscience,  but  borne  down  by  sorrow,  on 
the  clouds  of  which  he  saw  reflected,  from  time  to 
time,  huge  Brocken  spectres  of  even  his  minutest 
faults  and  failings.  He  nursed  his  sorrow  to  the  last 
and  seemed  to  say :  "  Assuagement,  in  this  world  there 
is  none  for  me.  Obliteration  I  would  not  have.  My 
grief  is  my  only  comfort."  Death  is  a  mighty  alche- 
mist. It  transmutes  much.  On  the  erring  woman 
it  leaves  "  only  the  beautiful."  It  makes  instruments 
with  which  to  scourge  us,  not  only  of  our  pleasant 
vices,  but  of  our  paltry  neglects  and  trivial  trespasses. 

83 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

When  it  bereaves  the  aged,  golden  memories  are 
converted  into  leaden  regrets. 

Carlyle  constantly  used  the  word  remorse  some- 
what indiscriminately,  sometimes  in  the  sense  of  com- 
passionate regret,  sometimes  of  mere  vexation.  He 
had  "  remorse,"  as  he  calls  it,  when  visiting  the  grave 
of  his  mother,  to  whom  he  had  been  the  kindest  and 
most  devoted  of  sons,  when  he  did  not  succeed 
as  well  as  he  had  expected  in  a  lecture,  and  when 
Froude  came  in  and  interrupted  his  studies.  In  the 
case  of  his  wife  his  remorse  hinged  on  his  having  failed 
adequately  to  estimate  her  sufferings  and  on  having 
bored  her  with  his  "  Frederick."  "  Oh,  I  was  blind 
not  to  see  how  brittle  was  the  thread  of  noble  celes- 
tial (almost  more  than  terrestrial)  life ;  how  much  it 
was  all  in  all  to  me,  and  how  impossible  it  should  be 
left  with  me."  "  I  had  at  last  conquered  Mollwitz, 
saw  it  all  clear  ahead  and  round  me,  and  took  to  tell- 
ing her  stories  about  it,  in  my  poor  bit  of  joy,  night 
after  night.  I  recollect  she  answered  little,  though 
kindly  always.  Privately,  she  at  that  time  felt  con- 
vinced she  was  dying: — dark  winter,  and  such  the 
weight  of  misery,  and  utter  decay  of  strength ; — and 
night  after  night,  my  theme  to  her  was  Mollwitz ! 
This  she  owned  to  me,  within  the  last  year  or  two ; — 
which  how  could  I  listen  to  without  shame  and 
abasement? "  And  this  was  the  sort  of  thing  poured 
forth  to  Froude,  "  shame  and  abasement,"  for  pros- 
ing about  Mollwitz,  and  Froude,  catching  at  the 
shame  and  abasement,  and  dropping  the  Mollwitz, 
turned  it,  in  his  crooked  imagination,  into  deep  and 
passionate  repentance  for  heinous  offences  against 

84 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

his  wife.  The  whole  thing  would  be  ludicrous,  if  it 
were  not  so  shocking.  There  is  not  to  be  found,  in 
all  Carlyle's  writings,  after  the  death  of  his  wife, 
when  he  was  probing  his  heart  and  memory  to  their 
depths,  any  specific  instance  of  an  offence  against 
her  more  heinous  than  his  refusal  to  shake  hands 
with  the  dressmaker  at  Madam  Elise's  when  she 
desired  him  to  do  so:  this  "cruelty"  he  afterwards 
called  it.  Mrs.  Carlyle  had  caught  from  her  husband 
the  exaggerative  use  of  the  word  "  remorse,"  for  a 
lady  writer  in  "  Blackwood,"  who  has  recorded  her 
reminiscences,  says  that  when  she  had  upset  a  work- 
basket  and  was  rather  profuse  in  her  apologies  Mrs. 
Carlyle  twitted  her  with  her  "  delicate  remorses." 

It  was  Carlyle's  septuagenarian  remorse  that  first 
endeared  him  to  Froude.  Up  till  then,  although  he 
had  been  for  years  his  most  obsequious  follower,  and 
a  constant  guest  at  his  fireside,  he  had  never  liked 
him,  he  admits.  But  now  it  was  possible,  not  merely 
to  admire  but  to  love  him.  His  sin  had  found  him 
out;  he  repented  and  resolved  to  make  an  atone- 
ment, which  was  to  consist  in  the  publication  after 
his  death  of  a  full  catalogue  of  his  misdeeds.  Froude 
hailed  this  as  "  an  expiation  so  frank  and  so  complete 
that  it  washed  the  stain  away,"  and  felt  honoured  in 
being  appointed  Lord  High  Executioner.  He  felt 
that  Carlyle's  "  character  never  could  be  put  fairly 
and  honestly  among  the  records  of  the  great  men  to 
whom  he  belonged  unless  the  faults  were  confessed 
and  absolution  granted  on  the  only  fitting  terms." 
The  confession  was  to  be  made  to  the  British  public, 
in  book  form,  but  by  whom  the  absolution  was  to  be 

85 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

granted  and  on  what  fitting  terms  are  not  made  clear. 
To  most  men  it  will  seem  that  the  line  of  conduct 
which  Froude  attributes  to  Carlyle  and  which  was, 
in  his  estimation  noble,  was  abject  and  cowardly. 
Penitence  when  sincere  is  praiseworthy,  but  it  should 
"be  indulged  in  in  silence  and  solitude,  and  not  pro- 
claimed in  lamentations,  in  the  highway.  Repara- 
tion, where  practicable,  is  its  sweetest  fruit,  but  it  can 
scarcely  be  held  to  include  an  apology  to  the  injured 
person  who  is  dead,  tendered  in  the  obituary  notice 
of  the  transgressor.  If  Carlyle  had  felt  that  any 
public  acknowledgment  of  his  ill-treatment  of  his  wife 
was  required  of  him,  it  would  have  been  made  while 
he  was  still  alive  to  bear  the  brunt  of  just  condemna- 
tion, and  not  delayed  till  he  was  beyond  the  reach  of 
censure  in  Ecclefechan  kirk-yard.  He  was  honest 
and  manly  and  never  cringed  before  his  fellow-men, 
and  to  suppose  him  capable  of  a  craven  subterfuge, 
by  way  of  expiation,  is  to  reveal  a  radical  misconcep- 
tion of  his  character.  His  pusillanimous  resolve, 
that  the  grave  faults  with  their  miserable  conse- 
quences which  he  had  been  ceaselessly  bemoaning 
for  fifteen  years,  should  be  made  known  when  he  was 
gone  earned  him  Froude's  "love."  Had  he  ever 
formed  such  a  resolve  it  must  have  made  him 
despised  by  all  right-minded  persons. 

In  accepting  the  office  of  undertaker  for  Carlyle's 
good  name  and  in  promising  to  smother  his  tomb- 
stone with  wormwood  and  rue,  Froude  felt  that  it 
was  not  unlikely  he  might  incur  "  the  resentment  of 
relations."  Did  it  ever  occur  to  him  what  the 
nearest  of  relations  might  have  had  to  say  to  him  ? 

86 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Edifying,  indeed,  would  have  been  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
expository  notes  on  his  proceedings  had  ^speech,  out 
of  the  Silences,  been  conceded  to  her  for  just  five  min- 
utes. Her  husband's  reputation  was  the  apple  of  her 
eye,  her  most  precious  possession,  that  which  above 
all  things  she  desired  should  remain  untarnished. 
About  a  week  before  her  death,  when  congratulating 
him  on  his  Rectorial  Address  in  Edinburgh,  she 
wrote  to  him :  "  I  must  repeat  what  I  have  said  before 
— that  the  best  part  of  this  success  is  the  general  feel- 
ing of  personal  goodwill  that  pervades  all  they  say 
and  write  about  you.  Even  '  Punch '  cuddles  you, 
and  purrs  over  you,  as  if  you  were  his  favourite  son." 
How  proud  she  was  of  him !  "  I  tore  it  open,"  she 
wrote  [the  telegram  announcing  the  success  of  the 
Address],  "and  read,  'From  John  Tyndall.'  (Oh, 
God  bless  John  Tyndall  in  this  world  and  the  next ! ) 
'A  perfect  triumph! '"  And  strangely  enough  there 
was  at  this  time  an  anticipatory  glimpse  of  the  evil 
that  was  in  store.  Three  days  before  her  death  she 
read  a  "Memoir"  of  her  husband  attached  to  a 
pirated  issue  of  his  Rectorial  Address  which  he  had 
sent  to  her,  and  she  thus  wrote  to  him  about  it :  "  If 
you  call  that  'laudatory  '  you  must  be  easily  pleased. 
I  never  read  such  stupid,  vulgar  janners.  The  last 
of  calumnies  that  I  should  ever  had  expected  to  hear 
uttered  about  you  was  this  of  your  going  about  'fill- 
ing the  laps  of  dirty  children  with  comfits.'  Idiot ! 
My  half-pound  of  barley  sugar  made  into  such  a 
legend !  The  wretch  has  even  failed  to  put  the  right 
number  to  the  sketch  of  the  house — 'No.  7! '"  De- 
cidedly the  Memoir,  with  its  inaccuracies,  its  legends, 

87 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

its  janners,  wasan  appropriate  forerunner  of  Froude's 
"  Life." 

The  three  specific  charges  against  Carlyle  which 
we  have  analysed  and  proved  worthless,  Froude 
spoke  of  as  the  secrets  of  Cheyne  Row.  They  were 
divulged  to  him  by  Miss  Jewsbury ;  but  he  found 
from  anonymous  letters  that  they  were  no  secrets  at 
all;  and  that  Froude  should  have  given  heed  to 
anonymous  letters  is  only  less  surprising  than  that 
the  anonymous  miscreants  should  have  taken  the 
trouble  to  [apprise  him  of  the  covert  nastiness  of 
Cheyne  Row,  rather  than  any  other  of  Carlyle's 
friends.  And,  indeed,  Froude's  attitude  towards 
these  secrets,  as  described  by  himself,  is  unintelligi- 
ble. They  were  secrets  which  were  no  secrets  at  all, 
and  he  painfully  debated  within  himself  whether 
he  should  conceal  them.  If  he  suppressed  them  he 
made  his  biography  a  mere  panegyric.  If  he  pub- 
lished them  he  might  incur  resentment.  "  What  was 
I  to  make  of  them? "  he  piteously  exclaims.  At  one 
time  he  confesses  he  had  drifted  to  "  the  cowardly 
conclusion "  that  he  would  suppress  everything  un- 
pleasant, dwelling  "  on  the  brightest  and  best  in  Car- 
lyle and  passing  lightly  over  the  rest,"  thus  baulking 
his  illustrious  friend  of  that  post-mortem  atonement 
on  which  he  had  set  his  heart.  At  another  time  he 
felt  that  concealment  would  be  wrong,  that  faults 
frankly  confessed  are  frankly  forgiven,  that,  as  Carlyle 
himself  had  taught  him,  it  is  "  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free  "  in  biography  as  in  everything  else,  and  so 
he  resolved  to  disburthen  his  friendly  bosom  of  the 

perilous  stuff  that  weighed  upon  his  heart. 

88 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Now,  the  frank  biography  is  unquestionably  de- 
sirable ;  but  even  the  frank  biography  has  its  limits, 
and  has  not  hitherto  been  held  to  include  details  of 
physiological  functions  or  stenographic  records  of 
every  unguarded  and  hasty  word.  It  should  not 
pander  to  unworthy  curiosity.  In  every  human  life 
there  is  a  highest  and  a  lowest  which  even  the  frank- 
est biography  should  leave  untouched ;  a  Shechinah 
which  should  remain  enshrined  in  cloud,  a  scullery 
which  should  be  hidden  from  view.  In  ignoring  this, 
and  in  laying  bare,  with  shameless  incontinence,  the 
most  sacred  emotions  and  private  details  in  the  life 
of  his  dead  friend,  Froude  has  exposed  himself  to  the 
full  force  of  Tennyson's  withering  denunciation  of 
those  who  traffic  in  posthumous  tittle-tattle  and  defa- 
mation. 

*  For  now  the  Poet  cannot  die, 
Nor  leave  his  music  as  of  old, 
But  round  him  ere  he  scarce  be  cold 
Begins  the  scandal  and  the  cry : 

"'Proclaim  the  faults  he  would  not  show  : 
Break  lock  and  seal :  betray  the  trust : 
Keep  nothing  sacred  :  'tis  but  just 
The  many-headed  beast  should  know.'  " 

But  it  is  not  only  the  too  frank  biography  that  in 

Froude's  case  is  complained   of,  but  the  false  and 

grisly  biography,  that  misrepresents  its  subjects  and 

perpetuates,  if  it  does  not  originate,  dishonouring 

false  witness  regarding  him.    "  A  well-written  Life," 

said  Carlyle,  "  is  almost  as  rare  as  a  well-spent  one." 

Never  was  Life  worse  written  than  his  own. 

89 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Froude  complains  that  in  preparing  for  his  biogra- 
phy of  Carlyle  he  was  much  embarrassed  by  the 
vacillation  of  Carlyle  himself,  and  in  this  connection  it 
is  requisite  to  examine  his  statements  as  to  the  bio- 
graphical material  placed  in  his  hands.  It  was  in 
187 1,  he  says,  that  Carlyle,  without  a  word  of  warn- 
ing, brought  him  his  wife's  letters  and  a  copy  of  the 
Memoir  of  her  which  he  had  written,  made  him  a 
gift  of  them,  and  asked  him  to  publish  them  or  not, 
as  he  thought  fit,  when  he  was  gone ;  and  it  seems 
highly  probable  that  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  mat- 
ters Froude's  memory  played  him  false,  for  if  Carlyle 
had  made  a  gift  of  these  papers  to  him  in  187 1,  it  is 
remarkable  that  he  should  specifically  bequeath  them 
to  him  by  will  in  1873.  Froude  does  not  allege  that 
these  manuscripts  were  ever  seen  by  Carlyle  after 
he  handed  them  to  him,  and  yet  they  contain  notes 
by  Carlyle,  dated  1873.  It  was  in  that  year  (1873), 
Froude  alleges,  that  Carlyle  sent  him  in  a  box  a 
collection  of  letters,  diaries,  memoirs,  miscellanies  of 
endless  sorts,  with  a  request  that  he  would  undertake 
his  biography,  for  which  these  were  the  materials, 
and  yet  in  that  very  year  Carlyle  left  by  will  to  his 
brother  John  all  his  manuscripts,  except  the  Letters 
and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  given  to 
Froude,  and  directed  that  in  all  such  matters  he 
wished  his  brother  John  to  be  regarded  as  his  second 
and  surviving  self. 

At  the  very  moment  when  Froude  represents  Car- 
lyle as  thrusting  papers  upon  him,  and  insisting  on 
his  undertaking  the  unsought-for  task  of  composing 
his  biography,  Carlyle  wrote  in  his  will :  "  Express 

90 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

biography  of  me  I  had  really  rather  that  there  should 
be  none." 

Froude  stumbled  over  dates  in  this  matter  in  an 
inexplicable  way.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  un- 
likely that  papers  of  any  kind  were  put  in  his  hands 
until  1873;  and  then  it  was  that,  after  the  making  of 
the  will,  the  Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh 
Carlyle,  which  were  to  Carlyle,  in  his  bereaved  state, 
"  of  endless  value,"  were  given  to  him  in  order  that 
he  might  take  "precious  charge  of  them,  and,  to- 
gether with  John  Forster  and  Dr.  John  Carlyle,"  the 
other  Executors,  "make  earnest  survey"  of  them, 
and  of  the  autobiographic  notes  attached  to  them, 
and  decide  whether  they  or  any  portion  of  them 
should  be  published.  It  was  not  until  1877  of  the 
following  years  that  the  biographical  materials,  which 
Froude  alleges  were  given  to  him  in  1873,  were  sent 
to  him,  not  by  Carlyle,  but  by  Miss  Mary  Aitken,  to 
whom  they  were  given  in  1875,  and  who,  at  the  re- 
quest of  her  uncle,  gave  the  loan  of  them  to  Froude, 
for  biographical  purposes.  After  Carlyle's  death 
Froude  disputed  the  gift  to  Miss  Mary  Aitken  in 
1875.  He  tried  to  discredit  her  statement  by  urging 
that  she  could  only  say  that  the  manuscripts  had 
been  given  to  her  by  word  of  mouth,  and  had  no 
writing  to  show,  overlooking  the  fact  that  he  was 
himself  in  exactly  the  same  position,  and  that  Car- 
lyle's commission  to  him  to  write  his  biography  was 
by  word  of  mouth,  and  that  he  had  no  writing  to 
show  for  that  or  for  any  of  his  other  proceedings  in 
dealing  with  these  papers.  He  had  no  credentials 
to  exhibit.    Whenever  exception  was  taken  to  any 

91 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

step  he   took,  he   pleaded    oral   instructions    from 
Carlyle. 

If  the  decision  on  this  disputed  point  had  had 
to  be  given,  solely  on  the  conflicting  statements  of 
Froude  and  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  no  one,  looking 
into  the  matter,  would  have  hesitated  to  give  a 
verdict  in  favour  of  the  latter.  Froude's  inaccuracy 
and  reminiscent  extravagances  were  proverbial.  To 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  a  special  gift  was  bequeathed 
in  the  codicil  to  Carlyle 's  will  "as  a  testimony  of  the 
trust  I  repose  in  her,  and  as  a  mark  of  my  esteem  for 
her  honourable,  veracious  and  faithful  character,  and 
a  memorial  of  all  the  kind  and  ever  faithful  service 
she  has  done  me." 

But  the  gift  of  the  manuscripts  in  1875  to  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle  did  not  rest  on  her  unsupported 
recollection.  They  had  been  bequeathed  by  the  will 
of  1873,  together  with  the  Furniture,  plate,  linen, 
china,  books,  prints,  pictures  and  other  effects  in  the 
house  at  Cheyne  Row  to  Dr.  John  Carlyle.  But  in 
the  codicil  of  1878,  Dr.  John  Carlyle,  being  then 
sick  unto  death,  the  Furniture,  plate,  linen,  china, 
books,  prints,  pictures  and  other  effects  in  the  house, 
are  left  to  his  niece,  Mary  Carlyle  Aitken,  absolutely, 
while  no  mention  is  made  of  the  manuscripts  which 
in  the  will  formed  part  of  the  bequest  to  Dr.  John 
Carlyle.  Why  so?  Because  they  had  already  been 
disposed  of  and  given  in  1875  to  Mary  Carlyle 
Aitken,  who  had  been  dealing  with  them.  This  gift 
of  these  manuscripts  to  her  in  1875  was  corroborated 
by  Carlyle  himself  on  several  occasions,  and  was 
testified  to  by  Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle,  Mrs.  Aitken, 

92 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Miss  Ann  Aitken,  Mr.  Allingham,  Mr.  Friedmann, 
Mrs.  Venturi  and  Mrs.  Anstruther;  and  Mr.  (now 
Lord  Justice)  Cozens-Hardy,  with  the  whole  case,  on 
both  sides,  before  him,  said  that  there  was  "good 
ground  for  contending  that  the  ownership  of  these 
documents  was  not  vested  in  the  Executors,  but  was 
vested  in  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  to  whom  they 
were  given  in  June,  1875."  Froude's  contention, 
therefore,  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  that  the 
manuscripts  for  the  biography  were  given  to  him  by 
Carlyle  in  1873,  falls  to  the  ground,  and  may  be  re- 
butted by  what  he  has  himself  written.  On  the  23rd 
of  September,  1879,  he  wrote  to  Carlyle:  "  I  conclude 
from  what  your  niece  said  in  her  last  letter,  that  you 
are  again  in  London.  We  return  ourselves  in  three 
weeks.  She  implies  that  you  wish  me  to  proceed  at 
once  with  the  task  [the  biography]  which  you  have 
imposed  on  me.  So  of  course  I  will  do  so.  I  began 
it  two  years  ago,  but  I  found  so  many  injunctions 
attached  to  the  letters  by  yourself  that  there  was 
nothing  to  be  done  until  long  after  you  had  your- 
self gone."  That  letter  was  written  in  1879,  and  if 
Froude  began  his  biographic  work  two  years  pre- 
viously^ that  would  be  in  1877,  or  exactly  at  the  time 
when,  according  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  the 
manuscripts  were  lent  to  him  by  her.  Froude  is 
once  more  wrong  in  stating  that  all  the  multifarious 
materials  for  the  biography  were  sent  to  him  at  one 
time.  The  letters  of  Carlyle  to  his  brother  Alick 
were  sent  in  instalments  during  1878  and  1879,  and 
in  November,  1879,  Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle  himself 
carried  a  bundle  of  them  to  Froude's  house.    The 

93 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

letters  to  Dr.  John  Carlyle,  the  most  voluminous  and 
important  of  all,  were  returned  to  Chelsea  by  his 
executor,  and  were  not  delivered  to  Froude  till  some 
months  after  Dr.  Carlyle 's  death,  which  took  place 
on  15th  September,  1879.  In  "  My  Relations  with 
Carlyle,"  Froude  says  distinctly  that  the  materials 
for  the  biography  were  sent  to  him  in  1873  in  a  box. 
In  a  letter  to  the  Times  on  May  9th,  1881,  he  com- 
plained that  these  materials  had  been  sent  to  him  at 
intervals  without  inventory  or  numerical  lists. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  how  Froude  can  bring 
himself  to  say  that  until  Carlyle  said  to  him  a  year 
before  his  death,  "  When  you  have  done  with  these 
papers  of  mine,  give  them  back  to  Mary,"  he  had 
regarded  them  as  his  own.     He  was  explicitly  told 
when  the  first  papers  were  lent  to  him  in  1877  that 
when  he  had   finished  with   them  they  were  to  be 
returned  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle.     In  February, 
1879,  when  driving  with  him,  Carlyle  spoke  to  Froude 
about  the  papers,  and  on  coming  home  told  his  niece: 
"  Froude  perfectly  understands  that  the  papers  are 
all  yours,  and  will  return  them  all  to  you.     He  has 
promised  to  do  so."     In  February,  1880,  Mrs.  Alex- 
ander Carlyle  accidentally  discovered   that  Froude 
did  not  seem  to  consider  himself  bound  by  this  con- 
dition, and  at  once  wrote  to  remind  him  of  it.     On 
the  same  day  on  which  he  received  the  reminder, 
Froude  replied :  "  I  perfectly  understood  that  all  the 
papers  were  to  be  returned  to  you  when  I  had  done 
with  them.    Your  Uncle,  however,  told  me  the  other 
day  that  you  were  expecting  them  now,  and  that  you 
thought  I  must  have  forgotten  about  them."     Two 

94 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

days  later  (loth  February,  1880)  he  wrote  again  to 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle:  "  It  has^  however^  long  been 
settled  that  you  were  to  have  the  entire  collection 
when  I  had  done  with  it.  Even  if  nothing  had  been 
arranged  about  it,  I  should  of  course  have  replaced 
it  in  your  hands."  These  admissions,  made  in  Car- 
lyle's  lifetime,  put  it  beyond  cavil  that  Froude,  who, 
in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  tells  us  that  until  a 
year  before  Carlyle's  death,  he  had  looked  on  these 
papers  as  his  own,  and  had  been  empowered  to  burn 
them  if  he  liked,  was  at  that  very  time  acknowledg- 
ing that  it  had  been  "  lo7ig  settled''  that  they  were  to 
be  returned  to  Carlyle's  niece  and  "  replaced  "  in  her 
hands.  The  power  to  burn  could  only  have  been 
conferred  in  respect  of  the  Letters  and  Memorials  of 
Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  which  were  undoubtedly  his, 
and  not  in  respect  of  papers,  which  were  lent  him  by 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  to  be  employed  in  preparing 
the  "  Life,"  and  which  were,  he  admits,  to  be  returned 
to  her.  Froude  could  only  use  a  comparatively 
small  portion  of  the  mass  of  papers  inadvisedly  lent 
to  him,  and  he  could  scarcely  expect  that  his  pro- 
jected "  Life  of  Carlyle  "  was  to  be  the  last  word  on 
the  subject. 

But  still  more  unequivocal  acknowledgments  by 
Froude  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  property  in  the 
manuscripts  are  forthcoming.  He  wrote  to  the 
Times  on  the  25th  February,  1881,  specifically  cor- 
recting the  misstatement  he  had  previously  made, 
claiming  the  papers  as  a  gift  from  Carlyle,  for  in  a 
letter  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  of  the  23rd  Febru- 
ary, 1881,  he  said:     "As  to  the  Times,  I  think  I  had 

95 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

better  write  a  little  note  to  Chinery  (the  Editor)  to 
say  that  by  'gave '  I  only  meant  'gave  in  charge  to 
make  use  of,'  and  that  the  MSS.  belong  to  you." 
Accordingly  in  his  Times  letter  of  the  25th  of 
February,  1881,  he  wrote:  "I  wish  to  add  that 
in  saying  that  Mr.  Carlyle  gave  me  these  papers 
I  did  not  mean  that  he  gave  them  to  me  as  my 
property,  but  that  he  entrusted  me  with  the  use  of 
them.  .  .  .  The  papers  belong  to  his  niece,  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle,  to  whom  he  directed  me  to  re- 
turn them." 

And  yet  Froude  has  the  audacity — there  is  no 
other  word  for  it — to  say  in  "  My  Relations  with 
Carlyle"  in  1887  that  it  is  still  " an  open  question " 
whether  the  papers  were  his,  forgetting  that  he  has 
again  and  again  privately  and  publicly  acknowledged 
that  they  were  not  his.  Carlyle  had  told  him  they 
were  not  his.  He  had  been  merely  "  entrusted  with 
the  use  of  them,"  as  he  himself  said  in  his  letter  to 
the  Times. 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  had  left  Froude  in  undis- 
turbed possession  of  her  papers  until  the  publication 
of  the  "  Reminiscences."  Up  to  that  time  Froude 
was  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship  with  her  and  her 
husband,  and  they  never  doubted  that  he  would  faith- 
fully discharge  his  trust.  But  the  appearance  of  the 
"Reminiscences"  was  a  shock  to  them,  and  what 
Froude  calls  "the  hailstorm  of  unfavourable  criti- 
cism "  which  the  book  provoked  made  them  feel  that 
it  was  incumbent  on  them  to  do  something  to  protect 
their  uncle's  memory,  and  to  prevent  further  dese- 
cration  of   it.     The   inclusion   of  the   Jane   Welsh 

96 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Carlyle  Memoir  in  the  "  Reminiscences,"  about  which 
not  a  word  had  been  said  to  them,  convinced  them 
that  Froude  would  not  be  bound  by  Carlyle's  direc- 
tions, and  could  not  therefore  be  safely  entrusted 
with  the  more  momentous  work  of  preparing  the 
"  Life."  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  who  had  not,  as 
Froude  insinuates,  any  sordid  motives,  but  a  single 
eye  to  her  duty  to  her  uncle  and  her  family  and  to 
truth,  suggested  that  Froude  should  have  associated 
with  him  in  his  labours,  which  he  described  as  ardu- 
ous and  oppressive,  two  or  three  other  friends  of 
Carlyle,  men  of  judgment  and  discretion,  to  be  agreed 
on.  This  proposal  Froude — intensely  chagrined  by 
the  publication  of  Carlyle's  prohibition  on  the  publi- 
cation of  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir — strongly 
resented.  On  the  9th  of  May,  1881,  he  wrote  to  the 
Times  as  follows:  "The  Memoir  of  the  late  Mrs. 
Carlyle  and  the  collection  of  her  letters  made  by  Mr. 
Carlyle  and  partially  prepared  by  him  for  publication, 
are  my  personal  property,  given  to  me  to  make  such 
use  of  as  might  seem  good  to  me.  I  am  the  sole 
judge  what  parts  of  them  should  or  should  not  be 
printed,  and  neither  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  nor  any 
one  else  has  a  right  to  call  in  question  the  discretion 
which  Mr.  Carlyle  left  with  me  alone.  These  papers, 
which  are  mine,  I  shall  keep.  The  Memoir  is  pub- 
Hshed,  the  letters  will  be  published.  I  decline  to 
allow  any  person  or  persons,  whether  friends  of  Mr. 
Carlyle  or  not,  to  be  associated  with  me  in  the  dis- 
charge of  a  trust  which  belongs  exclusively  to  myself. 
The  remaining  papers,  which  I  was  directed  to  re- 
turn to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  as  soon  as  I  had  done 
7  97 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

with  them,  I  will  restore  at  once  to  any  responsi- 
ble person  whom  she  will  empower  to  receive  them 
from  me. 

"  I  have  reason  to  complain  of  the  position  in  which 
I  have  been  placed  with  respect  to  these  MSS.  They 
were  sent  to  me  at  intervals,  without  inventory  or 
even  numerical  list.  I  was  told  that  the  more  I  burnt 
of  them  the  better,  and  they  were  for  several  years 
in  my  possession  before  I  was  even  aware  that  they 
were  not  my  own.  Happily,  I  had  destroyed  none 
of  them,  and  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  can  have  them 
all  when  she  pleases." 

"  The  remaining  papers  which  I  was  directed  to 
return  to  Mrs-  Alexander  Carlyle  as  soon  as  I  had 
done  with  them,  I  will  restore  at  once  to  a7ty  responsi- 
ble person  whom  she  will  empower  to  receive  thein 
from  me!'  "  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  can  have  them 
all  when  she  p leases l' 

Here  we  have  a  voluntary,  unequivocal,  uncondi- 
tional offer,  twice  repeated  in  a  letter  to  the  Times. 
A  responsible  person,  her  solicitor,  empowered  by 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  applied  to  Froude  for  the 
papers  the  following  day.  Froude  refused  to  give 
them  up.  No  explanation  was  given.  He  had 
changed  his  mind.  It  has  since  been  said,  that 
Froude's  co-executor,  Sir  James  Stephen,  objected  to 
the  delivery  of  the  papers,  on  the  ground  of  some 
shadowy  claim  that  the  residuary  legatees  might  have 
upon  them.  That  was  an  after-thought.  Nothing 
was  said  about  it  at  the  time  the  delivery  was  refused. 
Froude's  own  subsequent  explanation  was  that  he 
was  provoked  into  making  the  offer,  and  had  been 

98 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

"  worried  into  great  impatience,"  but  it  was  necessary 
to  find  some  better  reason  than  that  for  the  non-fulfil- 
ment of  a  definite  and  deliberate  offer  made  in  the 
columns  of  the  Times,  and  so  the  co-executor  and 
his  objection  came  upon  the  scene.  That  this  objec- 
tion was  not  valid  may  be  gathered  from  the  way  in 
which  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy  brushed  aside  any  claim  of 
the  executors  on  these  papers,  and  that  it  was  not 
genuine  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  the  offer 
remained  still  unfulfilled,  after  Mrs.  Alexander  Car- 
lyle  had  undertaken  to  procure  the  assent  of  all  the 
residuary  legatees,  or  to  provide  the  executors  with 
an  indemnity  against  any  possible  claim  that  might 
be  made  against  the  residuai-y  estate.  If  the  papers 
belonged  to  the  executors  on  behalf  of  the  residuary 
estate,  one  is  constrained  to  ask  how  came  it  that  Sir 
James  Stephen,  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Froude,  was  at  this 
time  offering  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  the  profits  of 
the  "  Reminiscences,"  which  in  that  case  neither  he 
nor  Froude  had  a  right  to  touch  ?  How  came  it  that 
Froude  appropriated  the  profits  of  the  "  Life,"  which 
in  that  case,  in  part  at  least,  ought  to  have  gone  to 
the  residuary  legatees  ? 

Plain  men  with  non-legal  minds  will  perhaps  raise 
their  eyebrows  a  little  when  they  read  Sir  James 
Stephen's  defence  of  Froude's  breach  of  promise. 
"  You  afterwards  considered  yourself  entitled,  and  I 
entirely  agreed  with  you,  to  refuse  to  carry  out  the 
intention  thus  expressed.  It  had  no  legal  validity. 
It  was  a  mere  statement  of  your  intention,  and  was 
at  the  most  a  voluntary  promise  founded  on  no  con- 
sideration, made  in  a  moment  of  irritation,  and  which 

99 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

did  not  in  any  degree  affect  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's 
position."  At  all  events  it  was  a  promise  to  which 
Froude  had  called  the  world  to  bear  witness,  by 
publishing  it  in  the  Times,  and  Sir  James  Stephen's 
statement  that  his  deliberate  breach  of  it  in  no  way 
affected  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  position  is  incor- 
rect. It  caused  her  much  suffering  and  distress,  and 
as  things  turned  out,  although  that  consideration  did 
not  weigh  with  her  at  the  time,  it  deprived  her  of  a 
very  large  sum  of  money  which  went  into  Froude's 
pocket.  If  the  papers  had  been  returned  to  her  she 
could  have  herself  undertaken  the  Biography,  as 
Froude  had  once  said  she  was  well  able  to  do,  or  she 
could  have  arranged  with  some  other  literary  man  to 
write  it,  retaining  such  a  share  of  the  profits  as  she 
was  fairly  entitled  to,  seeing  that  all  the  materials 
were  undeniably  hers.  Froude  retained  the  papers 
and  wrote  the  "  Life,"  and  all  the  profits  of  it,  which 
were  very  large,  were  his. 

The  fact  remains  that  Froude  deliberately  broke 
his  deliberate  promise.  The  humiliating  position  in 
which  he  thus  placed  himself  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  improved  by  the  excuses  of  his  friends. 

The  Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle 
were  absolutely  Froude's  property,  given  and  be- 
queathed to  him  to  do  his  best  and  wisest  with,  and 
to  publish  when  made  ready  for  publication,  after 
what  delay,  seven,  ten  years,  he  might  in  his  discre- 
tion decide.  The  only  questions  that  arose  regard- 
ing them  were  whether  they  were  not  published 
prematurely  and  whether  they  were  wisely  edited. 
Instead  of  waiting  for  seven  years  after  Carlyle's  death 

100 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

— and  most  people  will,  we  think,  accept  that  as  the 
plain'meaning  of  the  Will,  they  were  out  within  two 
years  of  that  event,  and  "  fit  editing  "  there  was  none. 
"  Forster,"  says  Froude,  "  read  both  memoir  and 
letters.  To  me  he  gave  no  opinion."  His  widow 
assured  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  that  Forster  was 
altogether  opposed  to  the  publication  of  either  Let- 
ters or  Memoir,  and  there  can  be  no  question  that 
Dr.  Carlyle  took  the  same  view.  But  a  much  more 
serious  question  arose  in  regard  to  the  Memoir  that 
was  attached  to  the  Letters  and  Memorials,  entitled 
"  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle."  This  was  written  by  Carlyle, 
not  as  an  expiation,  as  Froude  represents,  but  as  a 
relief  to  his  feelings  in  his  most  dejected  moments, 
after  his  wife's  death,  and  it  was  assuredly  his  most 
earnest  wish  that  it  should  never  see  the  light  in 
any  public  sense,  or  go  beyond  a  small  circle  of 
private  friends.  Could  there  be  a  prohibition  against 
publication  more  solemn  or  binding  than  this,  which 
in  Carlyle 's  handwriting  was  attached  to  the  Me- 
moir?— 

"  I  still  mainly  mean  to  burn  this  Book  before  my 
own  departure ;  but  feel  that  I  shall  always  have  a 
kind  of  grudge  to  do  it,  and  an  indolent  excuse,  'Not 
yet;  wait,  any  day  that  can  be  done ! ' — and  that  it  is 
possible  the  thing  may  be  left  behind  me,  legible  to 
interested  ^mxm'woxs,— friends  only,  I  will  hope,  and 
with  worthy  curiosity  not  ^/^worthy ! 

"In  which  event,  I  solemnly  forbid  them  each  and 
all,  \.o publish  this  Bit  of  Writing  as  it  stands  here ; 
and  warn  them  that  without  Jit  editing  no  part  of  it 
should  be  printed  (nor  so  far  as  I  can  order,  shall 

lOI 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

ever  be) ;  and  that  the  ^fit  editing '  of  perhaps  nine- 
tenths  of  it  will,  after  I  am  gone,  have  become  im- 
possible  y 

Notwithstanding  this  stringent  and  impressive  em- 
bargo, Froude  published  the  Memoir  within  a  month 
of  Carlyle's  death,  torn  from  the  Letters  and  Me- 
morials to  which  Carlyle  had  attached  it,  and  included 
in  the  "  Reminiscences,"  made  up  of  papers  on  Car- 
lyle's father,  Edward  Irving,  Lord  Jeffrey,  Southey 
and  Wordsworth.  The  prohibition  against  publi- 
cation, which  formed  part  of  the  Memoir,  was 
suppressed,  and  would  never  have  been  heard  of,  had 
not  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  discovered  it  and  sent  it 
to  the  Times.  Froude  then  explained  that  the  writ- 
ten prohibition,  indited  at  a  time  when  Carlyle  was 
fully  conscious  of  the  character  of  his  work,  was  sub- 
sequently cancelled  by  oral  communications,  when 
or  where  he  did  not  say.  This  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  firmly  denied.  During  the  thirteen  years  she 
was  her  uncle's  constant  companion  and  amanuensis, 
she  knew  of  the  existence  of  this  fragment,  and  often 
heard  him  speak  of  it,  always  in  the  sense  that  it 
should  never  be  published,  and  she  was  astounded 
when  she  heard  from  Mr.  Allingham  that  it  was 
actually  in  print.  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  letter 
which  appeared  in  the  Times  of  May  5th,  1881,  which 
Froude  called  "a  passionate  and  angry  challenge," 
was  studiously  moderate  in  tone,  and  was  written 
because  she  thought  it  only  right  that  people  should 
know  that  her  uncle  had,  when  his  mind  was  clear 
on  the  subject,  forbidden  the  publication  of  the  Jane 

Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir,  which  was  the  part  of  the 

102 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

"  Reminiscences  "  which  gave  most  offence.  Froude's 
defence  was:  "  My  conviction  is  that  he  wished  it  to 
be  pubHshed,  though  he  would  not  himself  order  it." 
In  another  place  on  this  very  point,  Froude  says, 
"  He  [Carlyle]  never  gave  me  any  order,"  so  the 
responsibility  was  his.  Froude  took  the  plunge  from 
which,  he  says,  Carlyle  shrank,  but  which,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  he  had  absolutely  declined.  Even  while 
asserting  that  injunction  against  publication  had  been 
withdrawn,  Froude  never  ventured  to  say  that  Car- 
lyle had  sanctioned  the  removal  of  the  Memoir  from 
the  Letters  and  Memorials  and  its  inclusion  in  the 
"  Reminiscences,"  and  the  reason  given  for  this  trans- 
ference is  remarkable.  Froude  removed  the  Jane 
Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir  from  the  Letters  and  Memo- 
rials, and  published  it  with  the  "Reminiscences" 
"  because,"  he  coolly  tells  us,  "  when  the  Letters  ap- 
peared, the  blame  of  much  might  be  thrown  on  her." 
His  object,  therefore,  was  that  people  might  blame 
Carlyle  for  what  ought  really  to  be  laid  to  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle's  charge.  The  proceeding  was  in  every  way  an 
unjust  one,  for  the  Letters,  or  a  fair  selection  of 
them,  published  along  with  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle 
Memoir,  would  have  relieved  its  gloom  and  prevented 
many  wrong  impressions,  difficult  to  smooth  away 
when  once  stamped  in. 

Even  had  there  been  no  prohibition  on  the  publi- 
cation of  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir,  its  publi- 
cation and  those  of  the  other  papers  with  which  it 
was  bound  up,  without  fit  editing,  was  a  colossal  mis- 
take.   The  papers  are  beautiful,  but  scattered  through 

them  are  acrid  and  stinging  things  that  Carlyle  had, 

103 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

in  his  dyspeptic  moods  and  incongruous  way,  said 
about  his  most  eminent  contemporaries  and  private 
friends.  There  is  not  one  of  us  who  would  hke  to 
see  his  or  her  private  diaries  and  familiar  epistles 
given  to  the  world  without  fit  editing.  Froude  took 
seriously,  what  were  in  Carlyle  often  mere  manifes- 
tations of  biliousness  or  only  fantastic  tropes.  And 
even  if  he  had  Carlyle's  directions  —  which  he 
assuredly  had  not — to  publish  his  undress  and  un- 
premeditated asperities,  he  erred  in  doing  so,  for  no 
man  is  entitled  to  depute  to  another  the  doing  of 
that  which  is  in  itself  wrong  and  ruthless.  Over- 
statement was  habitual  with  Carlyle,  and  his  hard 
words  not  seldom  concealed  the  tenderest  senti- 
ments. Mrs.  Gilchrist  relates  that  once,  when  he 
had  just  been  advocating  the  shooting  of  Irishmen 
who  would  not  work,  he  was  affected  until  the  tears 
ran  down  his  face,  when  Mrs.  Carlyle  read  aloud  the 
account  of  the  execution  of  the  Italian  Burnelli;  and 
that  on  another  occasion  he  was  caught  lavishing 
endearments  on  the  little  dog  Nero,  the  uselessness  of 
whose  existence  he  had  been,  a  few  minutes  before, 
denouncing  in  unmeasured  terms.  He  was  some- 
times a  rough-rinded  but  always  a  soft-hearted  man. 
The  "  Reminiscences  "  was,  Froude  himself  tells  us, 
"received  with  a  violence  of  censure  for  which  he 
was  wholly  unprepared,"  but  which  was  not  to  be 
wondered  at.  They  presented  an  altogether  unex- 
pected and  intensely  painful  outline  of  Carlyle ;  they 
wounded  the  feelings  of  many  living  persons,  and 
they  bore  obvious  traces  of  haste  and  carelessness  on 

the  part  of  the  editor.    They  were  printed  in  so  slov- 

104 


THE   NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

enly  a  manner  as  to  obscure  the  sense.  The  punc- 
tuation, the  use  of  capitals,  parentheses,  itahcs,  char- 
acteristic of  Carlyle's  style,  were  entirely  disregarded. 
Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  found  that,  in  the 
first  five  pages  of  the  printed  text,  there  were  more 
than  a  hundred  and  thirty  corrections  to  be  made  of 
words,  punctuation,  capitals,  quotation  marks  and 
such  like,  and  these  pages  were  not  exceptional,  and 
were  printed  from  MS.  written  in  1832,  when  Car- 
lyle's hand-writing  was  at  its  best.  For  this  blunder- 
ing, Froude  has  excused  himself  in  "  My  Relations 
with  Carlyle,"  by  saying  that  Carlyle's  manuscripts 
were  harder  to  decipher  than  the  worst  manuscripts 
he  had  ever  examined,  and  that  he  was  often  at  a  loss 
to  know  what  particular  words  might  be.  But  he 
had  himself  described  Carlyle's  manuscripts  as  "  beau- 
tiful," and  they  are  still  in  existence,  and  can  be 
submitted  to  competent  judges,  who  will  assuredly 
pronounce  them  deserving  of  that  description.  They 
are  clear,  distinct  and  easily  read,  and  in  connection 
with  Froude 's  excuse,  it  is  instructive  to  note  that  it 
is,  in  the  printed  text  of  Carlyle's  latest  writing,  when 
his  hand  was  shaky,  which,  Froude  says,  he  had  to 
work  at  with  a  magnifying-glass,  that  the  fewest 
mistakes  occur.  But,  as  will  be  seen  presently,  the 
liberties  that  Froude  took  with  Carlyle's  manuscripts 
were  not  confined  to  literal  or  verbal  inaccuracies, 
but  included  material  alterations  affecting  meaning. 
It  was  not  only  in  connection  with  the  inclusion  of 
the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir  in  the  "  Reminis- 
cences,"  and   the   flagrant  errors   that  deface  that 

work,  that  serious  difficulties  arose.     The  disposal  of 

105 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

the  profits  of  it  gave  rise  to  complications,  which  first 
came  to  the  surface  when  arrangements  for  an  Ameri- 
can edition  had  to  be  made.  Froude's  version  of 
these  compHcations  has  been  cut  out  of  the  text  of 
"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  by  the  editors  and  rele- 
gated to  the  appendix,  so  that  it  may  not  interfere 
with  the  continuity  of  the  narrative ;  but,  as  it  raises 
a  question  vitally  affecting  Froude's  good  faith  and 
is  really  the  introduction  to  an  essential  part  of  the 
case  against  him  in  relation  to  the  Carlyle  manu- 
scripts, we  think  it  better  to  discuss  it  here. 

"  A  singular  fatality,"  Froude  observes,  when  ap- 
proaching the  American  negotiations,  "  has  attended 
me  from  first  to  last  in  this  business."  That  is  quite 
true,  but  the  fatality  was  in  his  own  mind  and  meth- 
ods, and  that  it  was  so  is  clearly  established  by  the 
fact  that  we  find  an  American  publisher  with  whom 
he  had  dealings  bringing  exactly  the  same  accusa- 
tions against  him  which  have  been  made  by  all  those 
who  have  closely  scrutinized  his  conduct  and  work 
in  literary  affairs  in  this  country.     Messrs.  Harper 

and  Brothers  of  New  York  (the  Mr. of  Froude's 

Essay,  but  we  see  no  reason  why  their  name  should 
be  concealed)  have  accused  him  of  having,  by  giving 
Carlyle's  "  Reminiscences  "  to  his  own  American  pub- 
lishers, disregarded  the  usage  which,  in  the  absence 
of  international  copyright,  has  been  found  to  be  the 
fairest  practicable  arrangement,  and  is  observed  by 
all  the  leading  publishers  in  America,  under  which 
is  conceded  to  the  house  which  has  issued  the  work 
of  an  English  author,  the  option  of  republishing  upon 
mutually  satisfactory  terms  the  subsequent  works  of 

1 06 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

the  same  author.  They  accuse  him  of  inaccuracy, 
and  not  merely  of  lapses,  but  of  tergiversations  of 
memory.  They  accuse  him  of  repudiating  a  formal 
engagement  and  of  having  said  what  was  to  his 
knowledge  incorrect  in  informing  Messrs.  Scribner 
that  they  were  the  recognised  publishers  of  only  one 
small  work  of  Carlyle's,  whereas  they  were  his  pub- 
lishers for  the  "  Early  Kings  of  Norway  "  and  "  Fred- 
erick," and  purchased  several  of  his  other  works 
from  G.  P.  Putnam. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  enter  on  the  dispute 
of  the  publishers,  but  in  the  course  of  it  there  came 
out  a  bit  of  evidence  which  effectually  disposes  of 
Froude's  contention,  which,  in  view  of  his  own  ad- 
mission to  the  contrary,  it  is  truly  astonishing  to  find 
repeated  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  that  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle  had  no  claim  to  the  profits  of  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  and  that  his  offer  to  let  her  have 
any  part  of  them  was  "  a  spontaneous  resolution  "  of 
his  own,  and  a  piece  of  gratuitous  generosity.  Mr. 
Moncure  Conway  (the  Mr.  X.  of  Froude's  essay,  but 
why  should  his  name  be  concealed?),  was  in  1879 
representing  Messrs.  Harper  and  Brothers  in  Eng- 
land, and  hearing  that  the  "  Reminiscences"  were  in 
contemplation  he  approached  Carlyle  on  the  subject, 
suggesting  that  the  book  should  appear  during  his 
lifetime.  On  the  4th  November,  1879,  Mr.  Moncure 
Conway  wrote  to  Messrs.  Harper  and  Brothers  as 
follows : — "  The  old  man  was  evidently  gratified  by 
your  thoughtfulness  in  considering  whether  he  might 
not  like  to  have  some  of  the  money  while  yet  alive. 

However,  he  does  not  desire  any  money  .  .  .  and  he 

107 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

desires  that  all  the  money  which  his  autobiographical 
work  shall  bring  shall  be  paid  to  his  niece,  Mary 
Aitken  Carlyle,  who  has  lived  with  him  since  his 
wife's  death  and  is  now  nursing  him,  night  and  day. 
This  book  is  to  be  added  to  her  share  as  she  well 
deserves." 

Now  here  we  have  the  testimony  of  an  independ- 
ent and  disinterested  witness  writing  in  1879,  and 
after  direct  communication  with  Carlyle,  that,  as  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle  consistently  maintained,  Carlyle 
had  decided  that  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences  " 
should  go  to  her  as  part  of  the  provision  he  intended 
to  make  for  her.  And  that  was  an  equitable  arrange- 
ment, for  the  "  Reminiscences,"  as  Carlyle  under- 
stood them,  consisted  entirely  of  his  own  literary 
work  which  he  had  given  to  his  niece.  He  had  no 
foreshadowing  that  his  instructions  would  be  set  at 
naught,  and  that  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir, 
which  none  but  loving  eyes  should  see,  would  be  in- 
corporated in  the  book  for  public  gaze  in  both  hemi- 
spheres. These  essays  were  amongst  the  manu- 
scripts which  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  had  too  liber- 
ally lent  to  Froude  for  his  "  Life"  of  her  uncle,  but  they 
had  a  biographic  rather  than  an  autobiographic  value, 
and  when  they  were  separated  from  the  other  material 
for  publication  as  a  separate  work,  they  were  placed 
outside  Froude's  commission.  Froude  ultimately  es- 
tablished a  personal  interest  in  the  work  by  adding  to 
it  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir,  which  formed 
part  of  the  manuscripts  given  and  bequeathed  to  him 
by  Carlyle,  but  during  Carlyle's  life  he  never  ven- 
tured to  moot  such  a  proceeding.     Froude  wrote  to 

108 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Carlyle  on  the  29th  September,  1879,  enumerating 
the  names  of  the  articles  that  were  to  form  the 
"  Reminiscences,"  and  the  Memoir  is  not  amongst 
them! 

While  Carlyle  lived  Froude  made  no  claim  to  tlie 
profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences."  He  told  Mrs.  Alex- 
ander Carlyle  that  she  had  a  better  right  to  the 
money  than  he,  as  the  book  was  her  uncle's  writing 
and  not  his.  His  exact  words,  one  month  before 
Carlyle 's  death  were :  "  The  book  was  written  by  your 
uncle,  not  by  me,  and  there  would  be  no  propriety  in 
my  receiving  the  money  for  it."  He  regarded  him- 
self as  merely  a  trustee  of  the  copyright  for  her,  and 
when  she  was  dining  with  him  on  the  20th  of  No- 
vember, 1879,  her  husband,  Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle, 
Mr.  Ashley  Froude  and  Miss  Margaret  Froude  being 
present,  he  confirmed  this  in  the  most  explicit 
manner,  promising  to  hold  the  whole  profits  of  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  for  her.  Carlyle  died  in  the  belief 
that  these  profits  were  part  of  the  provision  he  had 
made  for  his  niece.  It  was,  therefore,  with  astonish- 
ment that  on  the  14th  of  February,  1881  (Carlyle 
being  then  dead,  and  the  "  Reminiscences  "  not  yet 
published),  she  heard  from  Froude  that  Longman 
had  paid  him  ;!^65o  for  the  first  edition,  out  of  which 
he  proposed  to  pay  her  ^^300  as  half  of  his  receipts — 
"  the  odd  ^50  I  keep  for  another  purpose,"  that  other 
purpose  being,  it  turned  out,  a  subscription  in  his 
own  name  to  a  fund  then  being  raised  to  buy  5, 
Cheyne  Row,  and  present  it  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Car- 
lyle.   To  this  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  demurred,  as 

being  inconsistent  with  her  uncle's  intentions  and 

109 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

Froude's  engagement  with  her;  and  on  the  21st  of 
February,  1881,  Sir  James  Stephen  wrote  to  her  that 
Froude  was  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  note  of  a 
conversation  with  her  which  Sir  James  Stephen  had 
himself  drafted.    The  note  on  this  point  ran  thus: — 

"  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  says  that  Mr.  Froude 
some  time  ago  promised  to  give  her  the  whole  pro- 
ceeds of  the  'Reminiscences,'  and  that  she  informed 
her  uncle  of  his  intention,  and  that  he  approved  it, 
and  that  under  these  circumstances  she  declines  to 
receive  any  share  of  the  proceeds  less  than  the 
whole." 

On  the  same  day,  21st  February,  188 1,  Froude 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle :  "  I  had  settled  in 
my  own  mind  that  you  ought  to  have  half  of  the 
English  copyright  of  both  books,  the  'Reminis- 
cences '  and  the  *  Life  and  Letters '  to  follow.  Of 
course  you  shall  have  every  farthing  that  comes  from 
the  ' Remz7izscences,'  whether  irom  England,  America, 
or  the  Continent,  and  I  hope  that  it  will  prove  as 
good  a  bargain  for  you  as  the  other  would  have 
been.  ...  I  may  as  well  remind  you  that  two-thirds 
of  the  second  volume  of  the  '  Reminiscences  '  is  from 
the  'Letters  and  Memorials,'  and  so  mine,  if  I  wished 
to  insist  on  such  a  thing,  which  I  don't." 

Two  days  later,  on  the  23rd  of  February,  Froude 

wrote  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  as  follows:   "  I  am 

bound  to  tell  you  that  Ashley  [Froude's  son],  who 

was  present,  it  seems,  at  one  of  the  conversations 

about  the  copyright,  entirely  confirms  yotir  account 

of  it.     I  am  utterly  ashamed  of  myself,  and  I  can  only 

suppose  that  the  addition  of  a  new  volume  with  fresh 

no 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

matter  [the  Jane  Welsh  Carlylc  Memoir]  and  a  gen- 
eral sense  that  I  had  been  thinking  a  good  deal  about 
the  American  part  of  the  business,  had  confused  my 
memory  of  what  had  passed  and  led  me  to  believe 
that  I  was  free  to  arrange  the  details  over  again.  I 
do  not  wonder  now  at  anything  which  you  may  have 
thought  of  me." 

Whether  Froude  ever  had  definitely  settled  in  his 
own  mind  that  half  the  English  copyright  of  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  and  "  Life  and  Letters  "  ought  to 
be  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's,  cannot  now  be  known. 
That  bargain  would  have  been  largely  more  advan- 
tageous to  her  than  the  one  she  had  made  and  ad- 
hered to,  which,  although  Froude  afterwards  repudi- 
ated it,  he  at  this  time  acknowledged  in  the  frankest 
manner.  Even  Sir  James  Stephen,  Froude 's  yf^z/i- 
Achates  and  champion,  was  constrained  to  admit 
Mrs.  Carlyle's  claim  to  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminis- 
cences," for  in  the  preamble  to  an  agreement  he  pro- 
posed, he  wrote:  "That  it  was  understood  between 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Froude  that  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle  should  have  the  profits  of  the 
publication  of  the  said  volume  ['  Reminiscences'  ] ,  and 
that  such  an  undertaking  was  communicated  to  Mr. 
Carlyle  in  his  lifetime  and  approved  by  him."  With 
reference  to  the  proposal  that  all  the  profits  of  the 
"  Reminiscences,"  less  ;!^3oo  retained  by  Froude  in 
respect  of  the  addition  to  the  book  of  the  Jane  Welsh 
Carlyle  Memoir,  Sir  James  Stephen  wrote:  "It 
seems  to  me  that  this  arrangement  would  be  essen- 
tially just.    It  would  give  Mrs.  Carlyle  what  both  her 

uncle  and  Mr.  Froude  intended  her  to  have.  ...  It 

III 


THE   NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

is,  indeed,  not  improbable  that  she  would  have  been 
better  provided  for  in  the  will  if  this  expectation  on 
the  part  of  her  uncle  had  not  existed." 

Will  it  be  believed  that  after  all  this,  after  the 
acknowledgment  of  her  uncle's  intentions,  and  of 
his  solemn  understanding  on  the  subject  with  him, 
of  her  equitable  right  to  the  proceeds  of  what  was 
entirely  her  uncle's  work,  of  his  own  engagement 
with  her  which  he  felt  so  much  shame  in  having 
attempted  to  depart  from,  of  his  written  and  many 
times  repeated  promise,  Froude  actually  refused  to 
pay  over  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  to  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle  unless  she  would  admit  that  it  was 
a  free  gift  from  him  ?  Will  it  be  believed  that  he  was 
supported  in  this  by  Sir  James  Stephen.?  Sir  James 
Stephen  wrote  to  Dr.  Benson,  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle's  solicitor,  on  the  20th  September,  1881: 
"  Mr.  Froude  admits  that  she  has  a  moral  right  to 
the  proceeds,  less  ^300,  if  she  is  willing  to  accept  it 
as  a  present  and  to  admit  his  property  in  the  MSS. 
But  if  she  refuses  what  he  offers  on  the  terms  he 
offers  it,  he  says  she  has  no  right  to  it  at  all."  In 
reply  to  a  letter  from  Dr.  Benson  declining  any  such 
admission  on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  Sir 
James  Stephen  wrote:  "  I  altogether  dissent  from  the 
view  that,  if  Mrs.  Carlyle  sues  Mr.  Froude  and  fails 
to  establish  any  legal  claim  against  him,  he  will  still 
be  under  a  moral  obligation  to  give  her  the  proceeds 
of  the  '  Reminiscences '  or  to  return  the  papers.  I 
think  that  a  promise  unaccepted  is  simply  an  offer 
which  the  promiser  is  both  legally  and  morally  justi- 
fied in  revoking  at  any  time  before  it  is  accepted." 

112 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Sir  James  Stephen  had  previously  written,  be  it 
remembered,  that  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  claim 
was  "  essentially  just." 

Froude's  position  seems  to  have  been:  "You  say 
that  I  am  indebted  to  you  ;^io  in  virtue  of  my  engage- 
ment with  you  and  with  your  uncle,  in  faith  of  which 
he  died.  I  admit  it,  and  here  is  the  money;  but  you 
shall  not  have  it  unless  you  admit  that  it  is  a  free 
gift  from  me." 

Sir  James  Stephen's  was:  "I  spontaneously  and 
unconditionally  promised  you  ^lo,  but  you  said  I 
was  indebted  to  you  in  that  amount  and  failed  to 
establish  your  claim,  my  promise  is  therefore  legally 
and  morally  null  and  void." 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  received  the  profits  and 
copyright  of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  as  a  gift  from  her 
uncle ;  she  declined  to  accept  them  or  any  part  of 
them  as  a  gift  from  Froude,  who  received  ;^300  in 
respect  of  the  "Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir,"  and 
every  penny  of  the  profits  from  his  "  Life  of  Carlyle," 
notwithstanding  that  the  materials  he  used  were  her 
property  (and  the  custom  is,  we  believe,  that  the 
owner  of  the  material  receives  half  the  profits),  and 
likewise  every  penny  that  came  from  the  Letters  and 
Memorials,  notwithstanding  that  she  had  copied  with 
her  own  hand  the  Memoir  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  and 
the  whole  of  her  aunt's  letters  and  Carlyle's  notes  on 
them,  twice  over.  Froude's  generosity  in  handing 
over  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  as  arranged 
with  Carlyle,  while  keeping  a  firm  grip  on  all  the 
rest,  is  not  very  apparent. 

In  claiming  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences," 
8  in 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  was  only  asking  for  what 
she  believed  was  justly  due  to  her,  and  her  object  in 
seeking  legal  advice  was  not,  as  Froude  suggests,  to 
enforce  the  payment  of  the  money,  but,  if  possible, 
to  prevent  him  from  misusing  the  materials  for  the 
Biography  as  by  common  consent  he  had  misused 
those  of  the  "  Reminiscences."  She  repeatedly 
offered  to  give  up  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  first 
issue  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  which  amounted  to 
;^i,530,  exclusive  of  the  ^300  retained  by  Froude  in 
respect  of  the  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir,  as  well 
as  the  copyright  of  the  book  and  all  future  profits,  if 
he  would  act  upon  his  public  undertaking  contained 
in  his  letter  to  the  Times  oi  May  9th,  1881,  and  would 
at  once  restore  to  her  the  papers  and  proceed  no 
further  with  the  Biography.  When  Froude  and  his 
co-executor,  Sir  James  Stephen,  suggested  that  the 
proceeds  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  as  well  as  the  pa- 
pers, might  belong  to  Mr.  Carlyle's  residuary  estate, 
she  offered  to  provide  a  substantial  and  approved 
indemnity  against  any  possible  claim  by  the  residuary 
legatees.  She  never  sought  from  Froude,  nor  did  he 
ever  offer  to  her  any  profits  beyond  those  derived 
from  the  publication  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  less 
^300,  which  he  retained  "in  satisfaction,"  as  Sir 
James  Stephen  put  it,  "of  any  claim  he  might 
have  in  respect  of  the  MS.  called  'Jane  Welsh 
Carlyle,'  or  in  respect  of  his  own  labour  in  prepar- 
ing the  work."  Seeing  that  the  "  Reminiscences  " 
was  entirely  the  work  of  Carlyle's  pen,  and  that 
the  book  was  sent  forth  practically  unedited  and 
loaded  with   errors,  most  literary  men   will   think 

114 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

that    Froude  was    not    inadequately    paid    for    his 
labour. 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  however,  found  herself 
powerless  to  prevent  the  further  desecration  of  her 
uncle's  memory.  She  was  not  at  liberty  to  withdraw 
from  Froude  the  loan  of  the  papers,  given  to  her  by 
her  uncle,  until  the  purpose  for  which  the  loan  was 
given  was  fulfilled,  and  he  was  at  liberty  to  go  on 
with  that  work,  even  after  he  had  twice  voluntarily 
offered  to  give  it  over  into  other  hands.  When  in 
1877  she  consented  to  let  Froude  have  the  papers 
she  had  implicit  faith  in  his  loyalty.  That  was  the 
time  when  Sir  James  Stephen  saw  him  deporting 
himself  as  the  affectionate  son  to  the  venerated 
father.  That  was  the  time  when  he  was  habitually 
beginning  his  letters  to  her  "  My  dear  Mary."  That 
was  the  time  when,  with  all  these  shameful  stories 
now  belched  forth,  dwelling  in  his  mind,  he  wrote  to 
her:  "  You  know  well  that  there  is  no  man  on  earth 
that  I  love  and  honour  as  I  do  your  uncle,  and  in  that 
spirit  I  hope  to  work."  She  never  doubted  his  loy- 
alty, and  being  young  and  inexperienced  in  the  ways 
of  the  world,  and,  moreover,  much  occupied  in  wait- 
ing on  her  uncle,  she  did  not  attempt  to  make  any 
selection  from  the  papers,  but  sent  him  a  mass  of 
material,  keeping  no  inventory,  so  that  she  never  had 
any  definite  idea  of  what  she  had  forwarded,  from 
time  to  time,  to  Onslow  Gardens.  Had  Froude 
known  how  he  came  to  be  possessed  of  all  Carlyle 's 
private  letters,  journals,  etc.,  he  would  scarcely  have 
boasted  as  he  did  in  his  letter  to  the  Times,  of  Feb- 
ruary 14th,  1 88 1,  of  the  trust  Carlyle  had  placed  in 

115 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

him.  It  was  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  who  so  bounti- 
fully trusted  him,  not  Carlyle,  and  for  having  done 
so  she  bitterly  repented.  She  discovered,  when  too 
late,  that  she  had  placed  in  Fronde's  hands  much 
that  her  uncle  had  never  intended  him  to  see,  and 
the  knowledge  that  she  had  thus  unwittingly  aided 
him  in  his  work  of  disparagement,  preyed  on  her 
health  and  spirits,  or,  as  she  herself  said,  broke  her 
heart.  The  complete  justification  of  her  forebodings 
and  suspicion  of  Froude's  designs  has  come  in  "  My 
Relations  with  Carlyle." 

Amongst  the  papers  which  Miss  Mary  Aitken  too 
confidingly  lent  to  Froude  were  the  love-letters  which 
passed  between  Carlyle  and  Miss  Welsh  before  their 
marriage,  and  which  would  assuredly  never  have  been 
seen  by  his  or  any  other  eye,  had  she  noticed  what 
Carlyle  had  written  respecting  them.  ''My  strict 
conima7id  now  is  'Burn  them  ij  ever  found.  Let  no 
third  party  read  thejn  ;  let  no  pri^iting  of  tJiem  or  any 
part  of  them  be  ever  thought  of  by  those  who  love 
me' "  And  yet  in  defiance  of  this  heart-felt  and,  we 
may  say,  death-bed  conjuration,  Froude  opened  the 
packet,  read  all  the  letters,  and  published  a  selection 
of  them,  in  the  Early  Life.  He  never  ventured  to  as- 
sert that  there  had  been  any  verbal  withdrawal  of  this 
most  earnest  written  command,  and  his  conduct  in 
ignoring  it  may  be  left  to  the  judgment  of  right- 
minded  men. 

And  not  only  did  Froude  read  the  love-letters 
which  Carlyle  held  sacrosanct,  not  only  did  he  pub- 
lish some  of  them,  but  he  so  selected  those  which  he 

published  and  so  put  a  gloss  on  them  by  his  accom- 

ii6 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

panying  comments,  that  they  convey  an  entirely 
erroneous  impression  of  the  relations  in  which  Carlyle 
and  Miss  Welsh  stood  to  each  other.  It  fell  to  the 
lot  of  Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  to  compare  the 
love-letters  published  by  Froude  with  the  originals 
— a  duty,  however  uncongenial,  made  imperative  by 
Froude 's  conduct — and,  although  Professor  Norton 
gives  us  but  partial  glimpses  of  the  courtship  in  a 
few  selections,  withholding  the  rest  on  the  ground 
that  they  are  too  sacred  for  publication — he  has  done 
enough  to  prove  that  the  characters  and  relations  of 
Carlyle  and  Miss  Welsh  to  each  other  during  that 
period  were  different,  both  in  particulars  and  in  gen- 
eral effect,  from  those  depicted  by  Froude.  Professor 
Norton  openly  charged  Froude  with  having  in  the 
case  of  the  love-letters  diverged  from  the  truth,  made 
assertions  incompatible  with  the  evidence,  and  with 
having  coloured  by  his  own  imagination,  those  state- 
ments, having  the  form  of  truth,  which  he  preserved. 
This  was  no  irresponsible  chatter  in  a  newspaper; 
it  was  not  a  mere  rumour.  It  was  a  well-weighed 
charge,  by  an  eminent  man  of  letters,  and  supported 
by  convincing  documentary  evidence.  It  was  made 
in  1886.  Froude  never  replied  to  it.  He  has  no 
word  to  say  about  it  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle," 
written  the  following  year.  With  reference  to  Pro- 
fessor Norton's  charges  against  Froude  the  Athe- 
nceum  (November  6th,  1893)  said:  "  The  charges  are 
very  grave  indeed,  and  as  Froude  in  his  letter  to  the 
Times  makes  no  answer  to  these  statements,  it  must 
be    assumed   that  he    allows    judgment    to  go  by 

default." 

117 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Space  will  not  permit  of  the  reproduction  of  the 
series  of  striking  instances  given  by  Professor  Norton 
of  Fronde's  warping  and  varnishing  of  the  love- 
letters,  but  one  illustration,  of  his  style  of  going  to 
work  and  of  the  amount  of  trust  to  be  reposed  in 
him,  may  be  given.  "  Mr.  Froude  tells  the  story, 
which  will  be  remembered  by  all  readers  of  the  book, 
of  the  relations  between  Edward  Irving  and  Miss 
Welsh,  of  his  falling  in  love  with  her  after  his  engage- 
ment to  his  future  wife,  of  her  reciprocation  of  his 
feeling,  of  her  refusal  to  encourage  him  because  of 
the  bonds  by  which  he  was  held,  and  of  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  affair  by  his  marriage  to  Miss  Martin.  It 
was  an  affair  discreditable  to  Irving,  and  for  a  time 
it  brought  much  suffering  to  Miss  Welsh.  Mr. 
Froude  is  aware  that  the  telling  of  such  a  private 
experience  requires  excuse,  and  he  justifies  it  by  the 
following  plea : — '  I  should  not  unveil  a  story  so  sacred 
in  itself,  and  in  which  the  public  have  no  concern, 
merely  to  amuse  their  curiosity ;  but  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
character  was  profoundly  affected  by  this  early  dis- 
appointment, and  cannot  be  understood  without  a 
knowledge  of  it.  Carlyle  himself,  though  acquainted 
generally  with  the  circumstances,  never  realised 
completely  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  which  had 
beeen  crushed.' 

"  Both  of  these  alleged  grounds  of  excuse  are  con- 
tradicted by  the  evidence  of  the  letters  of  Miss  Welsh 
and  Carlyle.  Her  letters  show  that  her  feelings  for 
Irving,  first  controlled  by  principle  and  honour,  soon 
underwent  a  very  natural  change.     Her  love  for  him 

was  the  passion  of  an  ardent  and  inexperienced  girl, 

ii8 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

twenty  or  twenty-one  years  old,  whose  character  was 
undeveloped,  and  who  had  but  an  imperfect  under- 
standing of  the  capacities  and  demands  of  her  own 
nature.  In  the  years  that  followed  upon  this  inci- 
dent she  made  rapid  progress  in  self-knowledge  and 
in  the  knowledge  of  others,  chiefly  through  Carlyle's 
influence,  and  she  came  to  a  more  just  estimate  of 
Irving's  character  than  she  had  originally  formed. 
Irving's  letters  to  her,  his  career  in  London,  his  pub- 
lished writings,  revealed  to  her  clear  discernment  his 
essential  weakness, — his  vanity,  his  mawkish  senti- 
mentality, his  self-deception,  his  extravagance  verging 
to  cant  in  matters  of  religion.  The  contrast  between 
his  nature  and  Carlyle's  did  'affect  her  profoundly,' 
and  her  temporary  passion  for  Irving  was  succeeded 
by  a  far  deeper  and  healthier  love.  *What  an  idiot 
I  was  for  ever  thinking  that  man  so  estimable,'  she 
wrote  in  May,  1824."  It  will  be  recollected  that 
she  afterwards  pointedly  remarked,  that  if  she  had 
married  Irving  there  would  have  been  no  gift  of 
tongues. 

The  whole  tendency  of  the  love-letters,  as  given 
by  Froude,  is  to  put  Carlyle  in  an  unpleasant  and 
intensely  selfish  light.  This  is  evinced  in  many 
minor  disparaging  statements,  so  made  as  to  avoid 
arousing  suspicion  of  their  having  little  or  no  founda- 
tion, and  so  arranged  as  to  contribute  artfully  to  the 
general  effect  of  depreciation.  Like  the  "  Reminis- 
cences," the  love-letters  are  thickly  studded  with 
errors  and  unnoted  omissions  of  words,  clauses,  and 
sentences,  which  sometimes  interfere  seriously  with 

the  meaning. 

119 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

What  has  been  said  of  the  Froude  version  of  the 
love-letters  as  regards  their  disposition  to  make  the 
worst  of  Carlyle,  applies  to  all  the  early  letters  made 
use  of  by  Froude.  One  has  but  to  read  these  letters 
in  Froude's  "  Life"  with  his  comments,  and  compare 
them  with  Professor  Norton's  series  of  early  Letters 
without  comment,  to  recognise  two  different  streams 
of  tendency.  The  latter  do  not  leave  a  bad  taste  in 
the  mouth.  The  impression  they  make  is  vastly 
more  agreeable.  The  sense  of  sourness  and  cynicism 
is  submerged  in  floods  of  kindliness  and  geniality. 
Even  when  Froude  is  most  favourable  to  Carlyle,  he 
does  not  succeed  in  inducing  the  same  degree  of 
sympathy  and  admiration  that  Norton's  Letters 
evoke.  Froude  depicts  Carlyle 's  relations  with  his 
father  and  mother  and  brothers  and  sisters  as  credit- 
able to  him — he  could  not  avoid  doing  so — but  in 
Norton's  letters  these  relations  become  generous  and 
delightful.  We  discover  him  there  the  affectionate, 
thoughtful,  reverent  son,  and  considerate  monitor 
and  liberal-handed  guide  of  the  rest  of  the  family 
circle.  We  see  him  in  far  manlier,  gentler,  more 
gracious  form  than  Froude  has  suggested  to  us. 

Froude's  allegation — made  to  suggest  a  sordid 
motive — that  "more  than  once  inquiries  had  been 
made  of  me  by  her  [Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's]  law- 
yers when  there  would  be  any  further  money  coming 
to  her  from  other  editions?"  is  at  variance  with  the 
facts.  Copies  of  all  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  law- 
yers' letters  have  been  preserved,  and  in  not  one  of 
them  is  there  any  inquiry  about  a  second  edition. 
The  lawyers  are  happily  alive  and  are  ready  to  meet 

120 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

Froude's  statement  with  a  flat  denial.  It  was 
Froude's  lawyers  who  first  raised  the  question  of  a 
second  edition  of  the  "  Reminiscences."  On  the 
1 2th  of  January,  1886,  they  wrote:  "The  'Reminis- 
cences '  of  Thomas  Carlyle  are  now  out  of  print  and 
a  new  edition  is,  or  soon  will  be,  required.  .  .  .  He 
[Mr.  Froude]  proposes  that,  as  Mrs.  Mary  Carlyle  is 
to  have  the  profit  of  the  work,  she  should  correct 
and  edit  the  new  edition,  but  with  this  proviso  that 
the  Memoir  of  Mrs.  Jane  W.  Carlyle  is  withdrawn 
from  the  book.  This  Memoir  being  Mr.  Froude's 
property  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  he  does  not 
intend  it  to  appear  again  with  the  'Reminiscences,' 
but  will  attach  it  as  a  preface  to  the  'Letters  of  Mrs. 
Carlyle.'" 

The  nonchalance  of  this  proposal  will  be  under- 
stood when  it  is  remembered  that  ^300  had  been  paid 
to  Mr.  Froude  for  the  use  of  this  Memoir  in  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  together  with  his  editorial  labours. 
Of  course  the  proposal  was  objected  to  and  the 
objection  was  sustained.  How  interesting  it  is  to 
note  that  Froude  had  at  length  discovered  that  the 
Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  Memoir  had  been  dislocated  from 
its  proper  attachments,  and  that  its  right  place  was 
as  a  preface  to  the  Letters ! 

Throughout  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  "  Froude 

assumes  the  attitude  of  an  injured  person  and  solicits 

public  commiseration.     The  task  of  writing  Carlyle's 

Biography  was,  he  says,  thrust  on  him,  he  accepted 

it  with  reluctance,  he  several  times  resolved  to  go  no 

further  with  it,  but  disinterested  friendship  carried 

him  on  at  a  great  personal  sacrifice,  and,  while  he 

121 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

might  have  produced  a  popular  work  that  would 
have  pleased  everybody,  he  courageously  chose  to 
incur  obloquy  in  order  to  insure  to  Carlyle  that  post- 
mortem immolation  which  he  had  so  earnestly 
desired.  No  one  kept  faith  with  him.  Carlyle  ought 
to  have  informed  him  that  he  intended  the  papers 
should  be  made  use  of  by  others.  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  ought  to  have  informed  him  that  the  papers 
were  hers.  Mr.  Norton  ought  to  have  communicated 
with  him.  But  everybody  did  what  they  ought  not 
to  have  done  and  he  was  left  lamenting. 

Whether  the  work  of  becoming  Carlyle's  biogra- 
pher was  thrust  on  Froude,  or  whether  he  diligently 
sought  it,  it  is  now  impossible  to  say.  It  was  unlike 
Carlyle  to  thrust  such  a  task  on  any  one,  and  up  till 
1877  l"^c  abjured  any  biography  of  himself.  That 
Froude  was  reluctant  to  undertake  it,  is  not  apparent. 
He  did  twice  threaten  to  throw  it  up,  but,  when 
pressed  to  surrender  it,  he  clung  to  it  stubbornly. 
However  much  friendship  may  have  mingled  with  it, 
that  it  was  a  disinterested  undertaking  cannot  be 
maintained,  for  it  brought  Froude  very  large  profits. 
It  is  distasteful  to  have  to  allude  to  the  money  ques- 
tion ;  but  it  is  Froude  who  has  introduced  it  by 
attributing  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  the  most 
mercenary  motives,  and  indeed  even  dishonesty,  in 
making  a  claim  to  money  to  which  she  was  not  justly 
entitled,  while  at  the  same  time  he  is  dwelling  on  his 
own  generosity.  A  casual  reader  of  "  My  Relations 
with  Carlyle"  might  rise  from  the  perusal  of  it, 
believing  that  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  had  greedily 

grasped  at  ev-erything  and  that  Froude  had  worked 

122 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

for  nothing.  It  is  therefore  necessary  to  point  out 
that  Froude  was  well  paid  for  all  he  did.  We  have 
reason  to  believe  that  his  "  Life  of  Carlyle  "  was  the 
most  remunerative  piece  of  literary  work  in  which 
he  ever  engaged.  He  has  told  us  that  the  profits  of 
the  first  issue  of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  amounted  to 
^1,830.  Let  his  representatives  tell  us  what  have 
been  the  profits  of  his  seven  subsequent  volumes, 
and  the  public  will  then  be  in  a  position  to  judge 
whether  he  was  quite  as  disinterested  and  badly  used 
as  he  tries  to  make  out.  The  "  Letters  and  Memo- 
rials," which  he  had  merely  to  edit  for  the  press, 
were  a  handsome  legacy,  and  from  the  other  papers 
he  drew  no  small  reward,  or  what  he  himself  would 
describe  as  "  an  immense  sum." 

That  Froude,  in  order  that  Carlyle  might  enjoy 
that  posthumous  penance  which  he  extolled  as 
heroic,  but  which  common  men  must  regard  as 
idiotic,  braved  a  storm  of  public  censure,  is  mere 
moonshine.  He  has  told  us  that  he  was  "quite 
unprepared  for  the  violence  of  censure  "  with  which 
the  "  Reminiscences"  was  received.  "  Those  tender 
and  suffering  passages,"  he  wrote,  "which  I  was 
universally  reproached  for  having  published,  I 
thought,  and  I  still  think,  were  precisely  those  which 
would  win  and  command  the  pity  and  sympathy  of 
mankind."  The  fact  is  that  he  made  a  miscalcula- 
tion,— a  huge  and  grievous  one, — and  mankind  at 
once  found  him  out  and  condemned  him  accordingly. 
If  Carlyle  did  hanker  after  a  moral  cremation,  and 
there  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence  beyond  Froude's 
imaginary  conversations  that  he  ever  did  so,  it  was  a 

123 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

senile  and  morbid  epiphenomenon  of  distracting 
grief,  which  a  true  friend  should  have  taken  at  its 
real  value.  What  good  could  come  to  any  mortal 
man  from  perpetuating  the  wailings  of  a  grief-tortured 
soul,  from  reverberating  them  and  founding  on  them 
a  story  of  life-long  delinquency?  The  only  effect 
that  Froude's  action  could  have  would  be  to  impair 
and  weaken  the  influence  of  Carlyle,  of  the  impor- 
tance of  which,  he  declares,  he  had  such  a  high  sense, 
and  which  will,  he  prophesied,  increase  with  each 
generation.  He  has  done  his  best  to  put  a  stop  to 
it.  If  all  the  world  is  to  be  made  every  great  man's 
valet,  and  if  the  tenderest  tremors  of  his  heart-strings, 
in  the  pensive  twilight,  are  to  be  trumpeted  abroad 
as  the  quakings  of  a  guilty  soul,  we  had  better  have 
no  biographies  at  all. 

In  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  "  Froude  has  ad- 
vanced in  rancour  far  beyond  the  "  Life,"  and  while 
attempting  to  blacken  his  subject  has  hopelessly 
stultified  himself.  "  The  only  life  of  a  man,"  he  has 
written,  "  which  is  not  worse  than  useless  is  a  *  Life  ' 
w^hich  tells  all  the  truth  so  far  as  the  biographer 
knows  it."  He  wrote  what  purported  to  be  a  true 
Life  of  Carlyle,  in  which  he  expressly  stated  he  had 
concealed  nothing,  but  all  the  time  he  had  up  his 
sleeve  a  series  of  shocking  charges  which  he  held 
ready,  on  occasion,  to  produce,  and  which  his  son 
and  daughter  have  now  tabled.  The  charges  are 
false,  but  if  they  had  been  true,  what  good  could 
their  production  do.?  Surely  it  was  fatuous  to 
imagine  that  Froude  could  clear  his  own  honour  if 

assailed,  by  throwing  shame  on  the  memory  of  the 

124 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

dead  man  who  had  trusted  him,  whose  loving  friend 
he  professed  to  be,  whose  reputation  he  had  already 
injured,  and  from  whom  he  had  derived  large  pecu- 
niary advantage  ?  The  charge  against  Froude  was 
that  he  had  misunderstood  Carlyle,  and  had  in  his 
haste,  inaccuracy  of  vision,  and  imaginative  miscon- 
ception, depicted  him  in  a  sombre  and  unfavourable 
light,  and  made  him  appear  quite  other  than  he  was. 
His  retort  to  that  charge  is,  "  I  was  too  kind  to  him: 
he  was  hideous  and  repulsive,  and  I  knew  it  all  the 
time."  Is  there  in  the  history  of  Biography  another 
instance  of  perfidy  like  this?  There  has  assuredly 
been  no  literary  outrage  approaching  it  since  the 
publication  of  Hogg's  brochure  on  "  The  Domestic 
Manners  and  Private  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott." 

With  plaintive  air  Froude  asks  what  motive  he 
could  have  had  beyond  his  desire  to  gratify  Carlyle's 
remorse,  and  to  mete  out  stern  justice,  for  the  course 
which  he  took  in  his  "  Life  of  Carlyle  " }  We  would 
rather  leave  motives  alone  and  deal  with  actions,  but 
it  is  Froude  who  twice  over  has  challenged  an  exam- 
ination of  his  motives.  It  is  true,  as  he  says,  that  no 
one  does  wrong  without  some  motive,  but  motives 
are  often  beyond  sounding  depth — and  the  most 
potent  of  them  are  sometimes  the  most  unfathomable. 
It  is  possible  that'some  of  the  motives  which  actuated 
Froude  in  his  dealings  with  Carlyle's  biographical 
material  were  sub-liminal  in  their  operation  and 
unknown  to  himself;  but  on  the  surface,  motives,  not 
wanting  in  strength,  are  discernible.  Froude  is  not 
entitled  to  say  "  I  had  no  secret  injuries  to  resent." 

It  is  not  improbable  that  some  of  Carlyle's  too  out- 

125 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

spoken  strictures  on  his  writings,  such  as  that  they 
displayed  "a  fondness  for  indecent  exposure,"  and 
his  far  from  complimentary  references  to  him  in  the 
letters  he  read,  may  have  rankled  in  his  breast,  and 
it  is  at  any  rate  certain,  from  the  contents  of  this 
pamphlet,  that  there  was  a  sense  of  injury  as  to  the 
manner  in  which  Carlyle  had  disposed  of  his  papers. 
"  If  he  had  intended,"  says  Froude,  "  that  these 
papers  should  be  made  use  of  by  others  and  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  judgment  at  which  I  should  arrive, 
should  that  judgment  not  coincide  with  theirs,  then 
he  was  not  dealing  fairly  with  me."  "  In  his  will,"  he 
says,  "he  had  left  his  papers  to  his  brother  John. 
This,  too,  I  did  not  know  and  I  ought  to  have  been 
informed  of  it."  "  If  it  was  so,"  he  says  again  (if  the 
papers  had  been  given  to  his  niece  Miss  Mary  Aitken, 
as  they  undoubtedly  were),  "  I  had  again  been  treated 
unfairly,  for  I  ought  to  have  been  informed  of  it ;  but 
all  was  left  uncertain,  all  was  in  confusion."  Finally 
he  puts  it  bluntly  enough,  "  but  faith  had  not  been 
kept  with  me."  Froude  does  not  seem  to  have  kept 
his  sense  of  grievance  to  himself,  but  infected  with  it 
Sir  James  Stephen,  who  says:  "  The  whole  difficulty 
in  this  matter  arose  from  the  feebleness  and  indeci- 
sion— natural  enough  in  extreme  old  age — which 
prevented  Mr.  Carlyle  from  making  up  his  mind 
conclusively  as  to  what  he  wished  to  be  done  about 
his  papers,  and  having  his  decision  put  into  writing." 
Unquestionably  when  Froude  came  to  arrange  and 
comment  on  these  papers  the  old  reverence  which 
led  him  at  one  time  to  regard  Carlyle  as  almost 

superhuman,  so  that  he  reflected  how  every  word  he 

126 


THE  NEMESIS   OF  FROUDE 

wrote  would  seem  in  his  eyes,  in  order  that  affecta- 
tion might  be  avoided,  had  evaporated,  and  there  had 
come  in  its  place  a  rigorous  appraisement  of  the 
many  faults  and  failings  of  the  erstwhile  hero — 
amongst  which  had  been  some  want  of  candour  in 
his  conferences  with  James  Anthony  Froude.  Love 
and  admiration  there  still  were,  Froude  assures  us, 
but  mingled  with  these  was  grave  reprehension  and 
— shall  we  say — wounded  a^nour propre? 

But  if  it  was  in  this  mood  that  Froude  entered  on 
his  biographical  campaign,  other  motives  determining 
its  course  and  issue  soon  came  into  play.  The 
"Reminiscences"  appeared,  and  were  received,  as  he 
has  told  us,  with  a  violence  of  censure  for  which  he 
was  quite  unprepared,  and  from  that  moment  it 
became  an  object  with  him  to  justify  himself.  In- 
stead of  bowing  to  the  universal  condemnation  of  his 
indiscretions  and  observing  reticence  and  discrimi- 
nation in  his  further  progress  in  the  work,  he  bent 
himself  to  make  good  his  case,  and  influenced  no 
doubt  by  the  knowledge  that  he  had  in  his  keeping, 
as  a  last  resort,  those  shocking  secrets  which  he  has 
enshrined  in  the  pamphlet  now  given  to  the  world, 
he  proceeded  with  his  theme  of  adulatory  defamation. 
His  mind  was  poisoned  against  Carlyle  by  the  con- 
ception he  had  formed  of  his  treatment  of  his  wife, 
and  do  what  he  might,  amidst  all  the  nectar  and 
ambrosia,  the  subtle  and  deadly  venom  would,  from 
time  to  time,  trickle  out.  In  Froude's  somewhat 
rank  imagination  conceptions  grew  apace.  Once 
formed  they  were  expanded  from  within  and  never 

subjected  to  the  pressure  of  facts  from  without.     And 

127 


THE  NEMESIS   OF   FROUDE 

so  his  malign  conception  of  Carlyle  gathered  strength 
as  he  went  on,  and  is  seen  in  full  force  in  his  posthu- 
mous paper.  Let  it  be  granted  that  he  wished  to 
limn  truly  the  portrait  in  his  mind's  eye,  yet  that 
portrait  was  blotched  and  discoloured,  and  in  putting 
it  on  his  canvas  he  emphasised  the  blemishes  and 
deepened  the  shadows.  He  aimed  at  producing  a 
popular  book — what  biographer  does  not?  and  he 
was  not  ignorant  that  startling  effects  and  controver- 
sial matter  are  attractive  in  literature.  His  "  Neme- 
sis of  Faith,"  which  he  himself  described  as  "  hetero- 
doxy flavoured  with  sentimentalism,"  did  not  attract 
much  attention  until  Sewell  publicly  burnt  a  copy 
of  it  in  the  Hall  of  Exeter  College.  The  sale  then 
went  up  with  a  bound,  and  there  was  a  call  for  a 
second  edition  within  a  year.  And  so  the  "  Remi- 
niscences," although  universally  condemned,  was  a 
decided  pecuniary  success.  The  "  Reminiscences  " 
was  bad  enough,  but  the  first  two  volumes  of  the 
"  Life  "  were  worse.  This  is  a  book  that  to  all  who 
knew  the  truth,  caused  pain  by  the  artful  detraction 
that  lurks  behind  its  professions  of  friendship,  admi- 
ration, and  even  reverence.  It  is  a  cynical  betrayal 
of  a  trust  and  serves  to  warrant  the  most  sinister 
inferences  concerning  Carlyle's  character  that  were 
drawn  from  the  "  Reminiscences."  No  unbiased 
person  can  read  it  carefully  without  a  conviction  that 
the  original  text — the  Letters — does  not  support 
Froude's  commentary,  and  that  the  Letters  them- 
selves have  been  glossed,  distorted  from  their  plain 
significance,  and  misinterpreted  with  perverse  inge- 
nuity.   The  process  is  discoverable  by  all  who  look 

128 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE 

beneath  the  surface,  and  in  it  Froude  has  revealed 
his  own  nature.  The  wrong  done  to  Carlyle  was  a 
grievous  one,  but  it  is  being  redressed;  his  real 
character  will  yet  shine  out  through  all  Froude's 
obscurations. 

"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  "  is  a  kind  of  literary 
garbage,  and,  like  garbage,  creates  disgust,  but  like 
garbage  also  it  may  not  be  without  its  use  in  nature, 
if  it  promote  the  growth  of  a  just  estimate  of  the 
spirit  and  methods  of  its  author. 

Intellectually  fulfilling  one's  ideal  of  greatness,  a 
man  made  in  the  noblest  human  mould,  in  originality, 
in  range  of  historical  knowledge,  in  breadth  of  literary 
culture,  in  command  of  language,  in  lustre  of  imagina- 
tion, in  grasp  of  judgment,  unsurpassed  in  his  cen- 
tui-y,  Carlyle  will  yet  be  recognised,  through  the  mists 
and  miasms  that  Froude  has  drawn  around  him,  and 
through  the  gloom  of  his  own  moodiness  and  melan- 
choly, as  morally  as  well  as  intellectually  great.  He 
was,  verily,  one  of  the  kindliest,  most  generous,  true- 
hearted,  humane,  and  upright  of  men,  in  whom, 
under  a  rugged  exterior,  were  great  depths  of  tender- 
ness and  comprehensive  sympathy,  who  with  intense 
earnestness  combined  quaint  pleasantry  and  genial 
humour.  When  his  shallow  and  ribald  critics  are 
forgotten,  his  memory  will  be  cherished  by  the  world. 


9  129 


APPENDIXES 


i 


APPENDIX 
I 

THE  CARLYLE  PAPERS 

In  a  pamphlet  which  was  printed  for  private  circulation  in 
1886,  and  which  has  been  given  to  the  public  as  an  Appendix 
to  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  Sir  James  Stephen's  view 
of  Froude's  dealings  with  Carlyle's  papers  is  very  fully  set 
forth.  Sir  James  was  co-executor  with  Froude  under  the 
codicil  to  Carlyle's  will,  was  aware  of  everything  that  took 
place  during  the  negotiations  after  Carlyle's  death,  and  was 
a  man  of  high  intellectual  endowments  and  of  judicial  train- 
ing, so  that  great  weight  naturally  attaches  to  his  opinion  in 
the  case.  That  opinion  amounts  to  a  vindication  of  Froude's 
conduct,  to  which  is  added  a  warm  eulogium  on  the  integrity 
and  purity  of  his  motives.  At  first  sight  it  seems  to  justify 
all  that  Froude  did  and  to  re-establish  his  reputation,  at 
least  in  as  far  as  the  use  of  the  Carlyle  papers  was  concerned ; 
but  a  closer  examination  will,  we  believe,  convince  the  open- 
minded  that  as  it  was  founded  on  evidence,  much  of  which 
has  been  proved  to  be  erroneous,  and  is  not  altogether  free 
from  partizan  bias,  it  does  not  possess  the  authoritative  char- 
acter that  Froude  ascribes  to  it,  and  cannot  be  regarded  as 
a  final  award.  It  was,  of  course,  not  a  judicial  opinion,  but 
that  of  Froude's  advocate  in  the  case. 

Sir  James  Stephen  had  somehow  formed  an  exalted  esti- 
mate of  Froude's  ability  and  character  and  would  not  listen 
to  anything  reflecting  on  either.  He  stood  aloof  from  what 
Froude  has  himself  described  as  the  storm  of  censure  and 
indignation  with  which  the  "  Reminiscences  "  was  received, 
and  legitimately  prided  himself  on  having  defeated  the  at- 

133 


APPENDIX 

tempt  made  to  prevent  him  from  writing  Carlyle's  Life.  He 
entertained  towards  him  feeHngs  of  deep  personal  attach- 
ment, so  that  in  reply  to  a  conciliatory  letter  from  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle,  asking  advice  in  the  interests  of  peace,  he 
wrote,  declining  to  help  her  as  she  had  consulted  a  solicitor 
and  said :  "  If  you  have  occasion  to  communicate  further  with 
me  on  the  subject,  please  observe  that  Mr.  Froude  is  my 
intimate  and  valued  friend." 

Sir  James  Stephen  accepted  the  version  of  his  intimate 
and  valued  friend's  relations  with  Carlyle  without  question 
or  demur,  and  the  version  presented  to  him  must  have  been 
very  different  from  that  which  is  now  given  to  us,  for  he  is 
able  to  say  that  he  had  never  heard  Froude  utter  "one 
ill-natured  word"  about  Carlyle  or  express  anything  but 
unqualified  admiration  of  him  morally  and  intellectually.  It 
was  perhaps  professions  of  unmixed  admiration  and  unvary- 
ing benignity  that  led  Sir  James  Stephen  to  accept  siniplici- 
ter  Froude's  assurance  that  Carlyle  had  deputed  him  to  make 
atonement  for  him,  by  taking  out  probate,  in  solemn  form, 
of  all  his  little  faults.  It  is  clear,  however,  that  Sir  James 
Stephen  did  not  know  the  measure  of  those  faults  according 
to  Froude's  valuation  of  them.  They  were  nothing  and 
amounted  to  nothing.  Sir  James  thought,  in  the  great  bal- 
ance of  Carlyle's  qualities.  He  believed  that,  as  there  was 
no  life  that  would  bear  a  more  severe  scrutiny,  there  could 
be  no  harm  m  exhibiting  such  small  flaws  as  freckled  it  and 
proved  it  human.  Had  Sir  James  Stephen  been  aware  that 
the  time  would  come  when  Froude  would  hold  Carlyle  up  to 
public  obloquy  as  being  all  flaws,  with  no  sound  part  in  him, 
as  selfish,  cruel,  arrogant,  neglected,  hypocritical,  as  a  man 
who  ought  never  to  have  married,  a  Lothario  and  a  wife- 
beater,  the  testimonial  he  gave  him  would  probably  have 
been  couched  in  language  somewhat  different  from  that  in 
which  it  now  appears.  Had  he  realised  that  he  had  been 
himself  deceived  by  Froude,  that  Carlyle's  alleged  ill-treat- 
ment of  his  wife  was  a  fiction,  and  his  desire  for  expiation 
the  figment  of  a  distorted  imagination,  and  that  some  of  the 

134 


APPENDIX 

statements  made  to  him  about  the  papers  were  inconsistent 
with  fact,  we  may  question  whether  there  would  have  been 
any  testimonial  at  all.  Sir  James  Stephen  was  a  just  man 
and  loved  decorum,  and  that  he  would  have  disapproved  of 
Froude's  later  revelations,  if  true,  and  condemned  them  ut- 
terly being  false,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Had  he  known 
what  we  now  do,  he  could  not  possibly  have  said,  as  he  did 
in  his  letter  to  Froude,  that  he  believed  his  revelations  about 
Carlyle  up  to  that  date  to  be  "  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth  " ;  he  would  not  probably  have 
taken  upon  himself  the  trouble  to  prepare,  although  there 
were  solicitors  engaged  on  behalf  of  the  executors,  the  case 
which  was  submitted  to  counsel  for  them,  or  to  write  long 
and  very  able  letters  to  Dr.  Benson  in  defence  of  Froude, 
which  seem  to  us,  however,  to  be  in  parts  somewhat  casuis- 
tical. 

Sir  James  Stephen's  strong  advocacy  of  Froude's  case  in 
the  Carlyle  controversy  was  undoubtedly  due  to  his  unlim- 
ited and  unique  faith  in  him.  Whatever  Froude  said  must 
be  true.  He  could  not  entertain  the  claim  to  her  uncle's 
papers  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  a  woman  of  unimpeach- 
able veracity — her  uncle  so  styled  her  in  his  will — because  it 
depended  on  an  oral  communication,  but  he  saw  no  difficulty 
in  adopting  the  statements  of  Froude — a  man  whose  inac- 
curacy was  even  then  a  bye-word — although  these  were 
founded  entirely  on  oral  communications.  Froude's  commis- 
sion to  write  Carlyle's  life  rested  on  an  oral  communication ; 
he  had  no  writing  to  show  for  it.  The  alleged  gift  of  the 
papers  to  him  was  by  oral  communication.  The  alleged 
permission  to  publish  the  "Memoir  of  Jane  Welsh  Car- 
lyle," notwithstanding  the  prohibition  on  publication  attached 
to  it,  was  by  oral  communication.  The  alleged  permission 
to  burn  the  papers  was  by  oral  communication.  The  sup- 
posed outpourings  of  remorse  and  instructions  for  the  pos- 
thumous penitential  parade  were  by  oral  communications. 
Froude  must  have  felt  that  he  was  making  rather  too  heavy 
demands  on  trust  in  his  own  memory,  for  he  says  in  "  My 

135 


APPENDIX 

Relations  with  Carlyle,"  "  I  see  now — I  saw  it  before,  but  I 
was  unwilling  to  worry  him — that  I  ought  to  have  insisted 
on  receiving  from  him  in  writing  his  own  distinct  directions." 

Most  of  the  points  raised  in  Sir  James  Stephen's  letter 
with  regard  to  the  Carlyle  papers  have  been  answered  in  our 
reply  to  Froude's  "  Apologia  "  in  which  they  are  also  raised. 
The  most  material  point  was  the  ownership  of  these  papers, 
and  as  to  this,  evidence  has  been  adduced  which  we  believe 
proves  that  they  became  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  property 
in  1875  by  gift  from  her  uncle.  It  is  desirable,  however,  to 
make  some  observations  on  the  memorandum  which  Sir 
James  Stephen  quotes  at  length  and  which  he  thinks  dis- 
poses of  that  claim — a  claim  which,  evidently  in  ignorance 
of  Froude's  letters  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  of  8th  and 
loth  February,  1880,  and  to  the  Times  of  2Sth  February, 
1 881,  Sir  James  Stephen  says  neither  Froude  nor  he  had  any 
notice  of  until  they  were  informed  of  it  by  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle's  solicitors  in  June,  1881,  and  which  he  somewhat 
discourteously,  not  to  say  questionably,  insinuated  was  not 
present  to  her  mind  at  the  time  the  memorandum  was  writ- 
ten, but  only  occurred  to  her  or  was  invented  after  she  had 
talked  over  the  matter  with  her  friends. 

The  following  is  the  memorandum  in  full,  as  copied  by  Sir 
J.  Stephen,  and  sent  to  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle,  with  the  covering 
letter : — 

"32,  De  Vere  Gardens,  S.W., 

"  2 1  J-/  February,  i88x. 

"My  Dear  Mrs.  Carlyle, 

"  This  is  the  copy  of  the  memorandum  I  made  this  after- 
noon ;  I  have  shown  it  to  Froude,  and  he  will  write  to  you 
on  the  subject  himself.    He  is  perfectly  satisfied. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"J.  F.  Stephen." 


136 


APPENDIX 

Memorandum   of   Mrs.   A.   Carlyle's   Understanding 
OF  the  Facts  Relating  to  Mr.  Carlyle's  Papers. 

1.  Papers  relating  to  the  late  Mrs.  Carlyle  be- 
queathed to  Mr.  Froude  by  the  will  of  Mr.  Carlyle. 
These  papers  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  considers  to  be  Mr. 
Froude's  absolutely. 

2.  The  papers  relating  to  Mr.  Carlyle's  father,  Mr. 
Irving,  and  Lord  Jeffrey,  intended  to  be  published  under 
the  title  of  "  Reminiscences,"  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  also  un- 
derstands to  have  been  given  to  Mr.  Froude  after  the 
death  of  Mr.  Forster,  though  she  does  not  know  what 
may  have  passed  between  Mr.  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Froude 
on  the  subject.  She,  however,  says  that  Mr.  Froude  some 
time  ago  promised  to  give  her  the  whole  of  the  proceeds 
of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  when  published,  and  that  she 
informed  her  uncle  of  this  intention,  and  that  he  ap- 
proved of  it,  and  under  these  circumstances  she  declines 
to  receive  any  share  of  the  proceeds  less  than  the  whole. 

3.  The  papers  relating  to  Mr.  Carlyle  and  intended 
to  serve  as  materials  for  his  biography.  These  papers 
Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  understands  to  have  been  given  to  Mr. 
Froude  so  that  the  property  in  them  passed  to  him. 
She  also  understands  that  Mr.  Carlyle  intended  that  any 
profit  to  be  derived  from  the  book,  for  which  they  were 
to  be  materials,  was  to  go  to  Mr.  Froude,  and  she  has 
no  wish  to  interfere  in  any  way  with  Mr.  Froude's  dis- 
cretion as  to  the  use  to  be  made  of  these  papers.  On 
the  other  hand,  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  considers  that  Mr. 
Froude  ought  not  to  burn  or  otherwise  destroy  any  of 
these  papers,  but  to  return  them  to  her  (Mrs.  A.  Car- 
lyle) after  the  biography  for  which  they  are  to  be  used 
as  materials  is  published.  J.  F.  Stephen. 

Febmary  21,  1881. 

We  have  here  given  the  memorandum  exactly  as  copied 
by  Sir  James  Stephen  and  sent  by  him  to  Mrs.  Alexander 

137 


APPENDIX 

Carlyle,  and  it  is  well  worth  noting  that  the  memorandum  as 
printed  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle "  differs  from  that 
copy  in  three  particulars.  In  the  first  line  of  the  first  para- 
graph Mr.  has  been  substituted  for  Airs.  Carlyle.  In  the 
fifth  line  of  the  third  paragraph  "  her  uncle  "  has  been  sub- 
stituted for  Mr.  Carlyle,  and  in  the  sixth  line  of  the  same 
paragraph  are  has  been  substituted  for  zvere.  The  substitu- 
tion of  Mr.  for  Mrs.  Carlyle  and  of  are  for  zvere  alter  the 
meaning  of  the  memorandum  in  a  manner  adverse  to  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle' s  claim  and  are  therefore  not  without 
significance. 

But  further,  the  note  appended  to  the  memorandum  in 
"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  "  is  very  different  from  the  note 
actually  sent  with  it  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  and  which 
in  Sir  James  Stephen's  handwriting  is  now  before  us. 

Note  in  '^  My  Relatiom  with  Carlyky 

This  was  written  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Carlyle 
and  Mr.  Ouvry  and  was  accepted  by  Mrs.  Carlyle  as  a  full 
statement  of  her  views.  I  sent  her  a  copy  of  it  this  day* 
February  22,  1881. — J.  F.  S. 

Note  actually  received  by  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle. 

I  made  this  memorandum  this  day  in  the  presence  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Ouvry,  and  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle 
said  that  it  correctly  expressed  her  views.  I  have  also  read 
it  to  Mr.  Froude.— J.  F.  Stephen. 

In  view  of  subsequent  events  it  is  interesting  to  note  that, 
according  to  Sir  James  Stephen,  Froude  was  "perfectly 
satisfied  "  with  the  memorandum  as  sent  to  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle. 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  however,  was  never  perfectly 
satisfied  with  it.  It  "correctly  expressed  her  views"  in  so 
far  as  the  effect  of  it  was,  as  she  supposed,  to  give  Froude 
"absolutely  "  only  the  manuscript  "  Letters  and  Memorials  of 
Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,"  to  which  his  right  was  never  in  dispute, 
and  to  give  him  also  the  possession  and  use  of  the  materials 

138 


APPENDIX 

for  the  "  Reminiscences  "  and  Biography,  until  these  works 
were  published,  on  the  understanding  that  all  the  manu- 
scripts and  papers  with  which  he  had  been  entrusted,  except 
the  manuscript  "Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh 
Carlyle,"  should  then  be  returned  to  her  intact  and  none 
destroyed  meantime;  and,  lastly,  to  give  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  "  Reminiscences "  and 
Froude  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  Biography. 

To  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  the  phrase  "given  to  Mr. 
Froude,"  twice  used  by  Sir  James  Stephen,  conveyed  the 
same  meaning  that  "  delivered  to  Mr.  Froude,"  or  "  placed 
in  Mr.  Froude's  hands  "  would  have  done,  and  so  was  equally 
consistent  with  a  gift  or  loan ;  but  in  the  third  paragraph  of 
the  memorandum,  which  deals  with  the  materials  for  the 
Biography,  Sir  James  Stephen  distinguished  these  from  the 
materials  for  the  "  Reminiscences  "  by  adding,  "  so  that  the 
property  in  them  passed  to  him  "  [Froude].  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  did  not  fully  understand  this  piece  of  legal  phrase- 
ology, which  was  not  explained  to  her ;  but  supposed  it  to 
mean  that  in  the  case  of  the  materials  for  the  Biography, 
unlike  those  for  the  "  Reminiscences,"  Froude  was  to  have 
the  profits  of  their  publication.  As  this  was  in  accordance 
with  the  tenor  of  the  memorandum,  she  did  not  at  the  time, 
nor  afterwards,  until  the  phrase  in  question  was  most  un- 
fairly used  against  her  as  evidence  that  her  claim  to  the 
papers  was  an  afterthought,  attribute  any  importance  to  it, 
believing  that  the  papers  were  to  be  restored  to  her  as  soon 
as  the  Biography  was  finished.  Why  should  she  split  hairs 
about  a  phrase,  which  so  distinguished  a  man  as  Sir  James 
Stephen,  of  whom  she  had  no  suspicion,  employed  as  the 
right  one  ?  When  Sir  James  Stephen  wrote,  as  he  did  at 
first,  "given  by  Mr.  Carlyle,"  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  said, 
"  No,  not  by  Mr.  Carlyle,  but  by  me ;  they  were  given  by 
me."  Thereupon  Sir  James  Stephen,  at  her  instance,  struck 
out  the  words  "by  Mr.  Carlyle,"  but  added  the  words  "so 
that  the  property  passed  to  him."  To  this  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  said  nothing,  because  she  agreed  that  Froude  was 

139 


APPENDIX 

to  have  the  profits  of  the  Biography,  and  only  stipulated  that 
the  materials  were  to  be  returned  to  her  when  the  work  was 
accomplished. 

Possession,  for  the  time  being,  of  the  papers,  with  the 
right  to  use  them  and  also  to  take  the  profits  of  publication, 
which,  in  the  case  of  the  Biography,  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle 
always  conceded  to  Froude,  would  naturally  seem  to  her 
very  much  the  same  thing  as  the  right  of  property  for  the 
time  being,  and  it  was  but  to  be  temporary  whilst  the 
Biography  was  in  progress.  Indeed,  as  every  jurist  knows, 
property,  according  to  the  old  Roman  definition  of  it,  is  jus 
iiiendiyfruendi,  abiUendi,  and  given,  as  in  this  case,  the  right 
of  use  and  the  right  to  take  the  fruits,  only  the  right  to 
destroy  or  part  with  remains,  and  this  was  expressly  denied 
to  Froude. 

The  phrase,  therefore,  after  all,  although  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  was  dissatisfied  with  it  and  complained  of  it  when 
she  discovered  the  use  to  which  it  was  put,  is  not,  at  all 
events  to  the  lay  mind,  very  inappropriate  to  the  transaction, 
which  the  memorandum  sought  to  define  and  interpret,  and, 
in  view  of  the  abundant  evidence  now  forthcoming  that  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle's  claim  to  the  papers  was  not  an  after- 
thought, but  a  claim  acknowledged  and  enforced  by  Carlyle 
himself  in  his  lifetime,  and  then  and  afterwards  admitted  by 
Froude  in  public  and  private,  orally  and  in  writing,  it  may 
seem  superfluous  to  dwell  further  on  the  circumstances 
under  which  the  memorandum  was  written.  Nevertheless, 
as  the  memorandum  was  Sir  James  Stephen's  sheet-anchor 
in  his  subsequent  dealings  with  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  and 
her  solicitors,  and  a  principal  foundation  of  his  estimate  of 
Froude's  rectitude  and  generosity,  and,  as  prominence  is 
given  to  it  in  "My  Relations  with  Carlyle,"  it  may  be 
well  to  point  out  that  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  respon- 
sibility for  its  terms  is  limited  by  the  following  consider- 
ations : — 

I.  Carlyle  died  on  the  5th  February,  1881,  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  having  been  his  constant  companion  from  1868,  and 

140 


APPENDIX 

having  nursed  him  during  his  infirmity  and  in  his  last  illness. 
He  was  buried  at  Ecclefechan  on  loth  February. 

2.  The  memorandum,  dated  21st  February,  1881,  was 
written  at  a  formal  meeting  for  the  reading  of  the  will,  and 
was  therefore  prepared  at  a  time  when  Mrs.  Alexander  Car- 
lyle  was  overcome  by  grief  and  fatigue,  and  was  not  in  a  con- 
dition to  transact  important  business. 

3.  It  is  in  the  handwriting  of  Sir  James  Stephen,  and  the 
phraseology  is  his,  and  it  was  written  by  Sir  James  Stephen 
at  a  time  when,  as  he  says  himself,  he  "  was  very  superficially 
acquainted  with  these  matters,"  and  was  his  summary  in  his 
own  language  of  what  he  calls  "a  diffuse  statement"  by 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  "  as  to  the  details." 

4.  It  is  not  signed  by  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle. 

5.  Although  it  deals  with  matters  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance,  involving,  besides  even  serious  issues,  pecuniary  inter- 
ests to  the  amount  of  thousands  of  pounds,  about  which 
differences  had  already  arisen,  the  memorandum  was  written 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  no  draft  of  it  was  submitted  to 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  and  no  opportunity  was  given  to 
her  of  taking  independent  advice  or  even  of  reflection,  before 
her  verbal  assent  was  asked  to  its  terms. 

6.  At  this  time  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  reposed  entire 
confidence  in  Sir  James  Stephen,  and  nothing  had  happened 
to  suggest  to  her  his  partiality  for  Froude  which  afterwards 
became  manifest.  It  was  not  until  after  the  9th  May,  1881, 
when  he  counselled  Froude  to  repudiate  his  public  offer  of 
that  date  to  restore  the  materials  for  the  Biography  without 
writing  it,  and  the  14th  May,  when  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Alex- 
ander Carlyle  requesting  her  to  remember  that  Froude  was 
his  "  intimate  and  valued  friend,"  that  she  realised  that  he 
was  prejudiced  against  her. 

It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  a  memorandum  drafted  under 
these  circumstances,  and  merely  read  over  to  a  lady,  who 
was  no  lawyer  and  was  not  asked  to  sign  it,  ought  not  to  be 
pressed  against  her,  on  technical  grounds  of  construction, 
beyond  her  own   statement  of  what  she  understood  by  it 

141 


APPENDIX 

when  she  accepted  it,  in  conversation,  as  correctly  express- 
ing her  views. 

The  following  statement  was  made  in  May,  1881,  in  sup- 
port of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  claim  to  the  ownership  of 
her  uncle's  papers : 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle. 

I  am  the  niece  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle,  with  whom 
I  resided  at  Cheyne  Row  from  1 868  until  his  death,  except 
for  six  months  in  the  year  1873.  When  I  went  to  reside 
with  my  uncle  I  had  just  left  school,  and  as  I  grew  older 
I  became  his  constant  companion  and  amanuensis.  From 
1875,  when  a  change  of  housekeeper  took  place,  I  had  the 
superintendence  of  my  uncle's  house  and  the  custody  of 
most  of  its  contents,  but  not  the  superintendence  of  his  pri- 
vate affairs.  As  to  his  private  affairs,  my  uncle  was  assisted 
by  his  brother.  Dr.  John  Carlyle,  who  used  to  balance  his 
private  accounts,  and  by  Mr.  Forster,  who  used  to  settle  his 
publisher's  accounts.  After  Mr.  Forster's  death  in  1876  Mr. 
Ouvry  settled  the  publisher's  accounts  for  1878,  and  I  did  so 
afterwards.     My  uncle  always  drew  his  own  cheques. 

As  to  the  contents  of  the  house,  I  divide  them  into  four 
classes,  which,  for  the  reasons  presently  mentioned,  I  treated 
differently. 

First,  there  were  my  uncle's  private  business  pa- 
pers, such  as  his  accounts  with  printers  and  publishers ; 
accounts  connected  with  his  Scotch  estate  of  Craigen- 
puttock ;  his  cheque  books ;  his  banker's  pass  book ;  the 
lease  of  the  house;  Dr.  John  Carlyle's  will,  made  about 
1853;  old  chequebooks;  old  bargains  with  publishers ; 
and  receipted  accounts.  There  were  also  my  uncle's 
own  will,  his  purse,  and  photographs  of  his  wife  and 
mother.  I  never  had  the  custody  or  charge  of  any  of 
these  documents  and  personal  effects.    They  were  kept 

142 


APPENDIX 

by  my  uncle,  some  in  a  large  secretaire  with  pigeon- 
holes which  stood  in  the  dining-room,  and  some  in  a 
writing-desk  and  chest  of  drawers  combined  which  stood 
in  his  bedroom.  When  my  uncle  gave  me  the  keys  of 
the  house  he  retained  the  key  of  these  repositories. 
With  this  class  should  also  come  my  uncle's  ward- 
robe. 

Secondly,  there  were  the  usual  contents  of  a  house- 
keeper's storeroom,  of  which  I  had  the  management  and 
superintendence,  and  in  respect  of  which  the  house- 
keeper was  responsible  to  me.  Of  these  of  course  I  was 
steward  only. 

Thirdly,  there  was  the  furniture,  plate,  linen,  china, 
books,  prints,  pictures,  and  other  gifts,  given  by  my 
uncle's  will,  made  in  1873,  to  my  uncle  Dr.  John  Car- 
lyle,  and  by  the  codicil  to  Dr.  Carlyle  for  life,  with  re- 
mainder to  me  absolutely.  These,  under  the  circum- 
stances presently  detailed,  I  came  to  regard  as  to  be 
mine  on  the  death  of  my  uncle  Thomas  Carlyle,  whether 
Dr.  Carlyle  should  be  then  living  or  not. 

Fourthly,  there  were  my  uncle's  letters,  manu- 
scripts, and  papers,  and  his  wife's  jewelry.  These,  under 
the  circumstances  presently  detailed,  became  mine  in 
1875  by  my  uncle's  gift,  although  I  was  always  anxious 
to  observe  any  wish  he  had  respecting  them,  and  was 
naturally  backward  to  speak  of  them  as  mine  during  his 
life,  never  anticipating  (except  on  the  occasion  which 
gave  rise  to  the  correspondence  of  February,  1 880)  that 
there  would  be  any  difficulty  after  my  uncle's  death 
respecting  my  ownership  of  them  from  1875. 

The  origin  of  the  gift  was  as  follows : — 

In  June,  1875,  my  uncle  Thomas  Carlyle  bought  seven 
£1000  1873  Sfo  Russian  Bonds  from  our  next  door-neighbour, 
Mr.  Laisn6,  a  stockbroker.  On  the  30th  of  June,  1 875,  these 
bonds  were  delivered  to  him,  and  as  I  sat  writing  in  the 
dining-room  at  Cheyne  Row  after  breakfast  my  uncle  alto- 
US 


APPENDIX 

gether  unexpectedly  brought  me  one  of  these  bonds  and 
gave  it  to  me  as  a  present.  He  said  that  he  had  in  addition 
to  this  provision  for  me  left  me  by  his  Will  £500.  He  also 
told  me  that  he  had  left  to  his  brother  John  (my  uncle  Dr- 
John  Carlyle,  who  was  then  staying  with  us  at  Cheyne  Row) 
all  the  things  in  the  house  as  they  stood,  but  that  he  now 
gave  these  same  things  to  me  instead,  which  arrangement  he 
had  explained  to  his  brother  John  who  would  also  speak  of 
it  to  me.  He  also  said  specifically  that  he  gave  me  also  his 
papers  and  his  wife's  jewelry.  He  said,  "  I  give  you  the 
papers  and  all  the  jewels  of  your  aunt."  He  at  the  same 
time  gave  into  my  possession  the  keys  of  these  papers  and 
of  his  wife's  jewels,  which  keys  I  had  never  up  till  that  time 
used  except  on  occasions  when  they  were  lent  to  me  by  him 
for  some  specific  purpose.  My  uncle  John  A.  Carlyle  the 
same  day  spoke  of  this  gift  of  a  thousand  pounds.  He  spoke 
of  it  as  being  in  his  opinion  a  small  provision,  but  he  added : 
'*  Your  uncle  has  also  given  you  all  the  things  in  the  house 
which  he  has  bequeathed  to  me  by  his  Will.  I  quite  approve 
of  his  doing  so  and  I  renounce  all  claim  upon  them."  He 
again  in  the  evening  spoke  of  the  gift  of  these  things  in  the 
house  in  the  hearing  of  my  uncle  Thomas  Carlyle.  I 
received  no  other  keys  from  my  uncle  at  this  time.  About 
three  months  later,  on  the  occasion  of  my  return  with  my 
uncle  Thomas  Carlyle  to  Cheyne  Row  after  a  visit  into 
Kent,  our  old  housekeeper  Mrs.  Warren  having  left  us,  I 
received  from  my  uncle  I  think  all  the  keys  of  the  house 
with  the  exception  of  the  keys  of  the  secretaire  and  writing- 
desk  mentioned  above  as  containing  his  private  business 
papers  and  other  personal  property. 

The  papers  of  which  my  uncle  gave  me  possession  for 
myself  on  the  30th  of  June,  1875,  were  then  some  of  them 
in  two  cupboards  in  the  room  which  had  formerly  been  his 
study  and  some  of  them  in  a  pedestal  chest  of  drawers  in 
the  drawing-room.  The  jewelry,  which  he  considered  very 
valuable  (in  it  were  the  brooch,  bracelet  and  chain  which 
had  been  sent  to  my  aunt  by  Goethe),  was  contained  in  two 

144 


APPENDIX 

jewel  boxes  which  were  locked  m  an  old  chest  of  drawers  on 
the  landing  outside  his  bedroom  door. 

From  this  date  (June,  1875)  my  uncle  never  dealt  with 
any  of  these  things  without  consulting  me  and  I  regarded 
them  as  mine  and  dealt  with  them  openly  as  such  in  the 
following  instances: — 

I.I  wore  the  jewelry  with  my  uncle's  knowledge 
and  approval. 

2.  I  gave  away  as  mementoes  of  my  aunt  a  gold 
compass  and  a  vinaigrette,  without  asking  my  uncle's 
permission. 

3.  In  November,  1876,  I  sent  to  Mr.  Allingham, 
then  editor  of  Eraser  s  Magazine,  a  translation  from 
Goethe  which  was  amongst  the  papers  given  to  me 
which  Mr.  Allingham  wished  to  publish,  but,  ultimately, 
I  decided  not  to  have  it  published  because  I  was  unable 
to  write  any  introduction  to  it  which  appeared  to  me 
satisfactory.  I  consulted  my  uncle  about  the  introduc- 
tion but  not  about  whether  the  MS.  should  be  published 
or  not.    This  my  uncle  treated  as  entirely  my  affair. 

4.  About  this  time  my  uncle  told  me  that  Mr. 
Allingham  had  spoken  to  him  concerning  certain  unpub- 
lished articles  by  my  uncle  which  I  had  lent  him  to  read. 
My  uncle  had  expressed  to  Mr.  Allingham  his  willing- 
ness that  one  of  these — an  account  of  a  tour  in  the 
Netherlands — should  be  printed  in  Erasers  Magazine ; 
but  my  uncle  said  he  had  told  Mr.  Allingham  that  the 
articles  which  I  had  lent  him  to  read  were  mine  and 
he  must  consult  with  me.  Mr.  Allingham  accordingly 
asked  my  consent  to  publish  some  of  these  articles 
(amongst  them  the  account  of  a  tour  in  the  Nether- 
lands) along  with  the  materials  for  my  uncle's  biography 
which  are  now  in  Mr.  Froude's  hands. 

5.  Wlien  my  uncle  complied  with  a  request  for  his 
autograph  before  1875,  when  he  gave  his  MSS.  to  me, 
he  often  used  a  piece  of  an  old  MS.  for  the  donee. 

10  145 


APPENDIX 

After  1875  he  never  did  so,  but  wrote  his  name  instead. 
I,  on  the  other  hand,  when  asked  for  an  autograph 
sometimes  used  his  old  MSS.  without  consulting  my 
uncle,  as  I  did  (i)  in  the  autumn  of  1876  for  Mrs. 
Annabella  Anstruther  of  Old  Ballikinrain,  to  whom  I 
gave  a  paper  written  ,by  my  uncle  on  a  new  mode  of 
roughing  horses  which  was  amongst  the  papers  my 
uncle  had  given  me.  (2)  In  1877  or  1878  for  Mrs. 
Hartpole  Lecky  a  MS.  which,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
formed  part  of  my  uncle's  MS.  of  "  Frederick  II."  Mrs. 
Lecky  asked  me  on  this  occasion,  "  Ought  I  not  to  apply 
to  Mr.  Carlyle  for  it .? "  and  I  replied,  "  No,  his  MSS.  are 
all  mine."  (3)  In  1878  and  1879,  without  consulting 
my  uncle,  I  cut  from  the  MSS.  he  had  given  me  the 
names  in  his  handwriting  of  several  personages  {e.g., 
Frederick  Wilhelm,  Marie  Ther^se,  Maupertuis),  of 
whom  we  had  portraits,  and  affixed  them  to  the  portraits 
where  my  uncle  frequently  saw  them  without  objection. 

6.  I  had  two  letters  of  Thackeray  and  also  a  poem 
of  Goethe  framed  separately  and  hung  up  in  my  own 
room,  and  I  put  a  paper  of  my  uncle  into  my  scrap-book. 
These  I  took  out  of  the  cupboard  referred  to.  My 
uncle  often  saw  them  and  treated  the  appropriation  as 
proper. 

7.  In  1 877,  after  some  communications  between  my 
uncle  and  Mr.  Froude  as  to  a  biography  of  my  uncle, 
my  uncle  asked  me  to  send  Mr.  Froude  such  of  the 
papers  as  I  thought  would  be  useful  for  that  purpose, 
but  told  me  distinctly  that  he  had  taken  care  I  should 
have  them  all  back  again.  I  was  then,  as  always,  anx- 
ious to  carry  out  every  wish  of  my  uncle,  and  I  accord- 
ingly sent  almost  all  the  papers  I  had,  but  I  might  have 
retained  all  if  I  had  desired.  I  left  the  selection  to  Mr. 
Froude  of  my  own  free  will  and  without  my  uncle's 
knowledge. 

8.  On  the  17th  April,  1880,  I  opened  one  of  the 
drawers  in  the  pedestal  chest  in  the  drawing-room  to 

146 


APPENDIX 

look  for  a  paper.  The  drawer  contained  unpublished 
articles  of  my  uncle  on  various  subjects  (articles,  there 
to  this  day,  on  Modern  Science,  Fenianism,  Trades 
Unions,  Skirving,  etc.,  etc.).  It  was  dark,  and  I  took 
out  the  drawer  and  carried  it  to  the  lamp  beside  which 
my  uncle  and  my  husband  were  reading.  On  turning 
over  these  papers  I  came  upon  a  letter  from  Disraeli  to 
my  uncle  and  a  copy  of  his  answer  to  it.  I  said :  "  There 
is  Dizzy's  letter  offering  to  make  you  a  Grand  Knight 
of  the  Bath.  Shall  we  show  it  to  Alick  ? "  (my  husband, 
who  was  sitting  by).  He  answered,  glancing  into  the 
drawer,  "  They  are  all  your  own,  you  may  do  what  you 
like  with  them."  From  this  drawer  I  took  out  an 
article  on  Wilson  (Christopher  North),  sent  it  to  Mr. 
Froude,  and  it  is  now  in  Mr.  Froude's  hands  amongst 
the  papers  claimed  by  me. 

The  following  is  an  instance  of  a  gift  made  to  me  by  my 
uncle  similar  to  the  gift  of  the  papers  where  I  acted  without 
question  as  absolute  owner  in  presenti.  In  February,  1876, 
my  uncle,  Thomas  Carlyle,  gave  me  the  watch,  chain,  and 
the  seals  which  had  belonged  to  Charles  Dickens,  and  which 
were  bequeathed  to  my  uncle  by  the  late  John  Forster.  I 
gave  away  the  watch,  the  chain,  and  the  seals  in  my  uncle's 
lifetime  without  asking  his  permission. 

I  never  in  my  uncle's  lifetime  had  any  misunderstanding 
with  Mr.  Froude,  who  was  at  all  times  kind  and  courteous  to 
me.  I  was  satisfied  by  my  uncle's  frequent  assurance  that 
Mr.  Froude  understood  the  papers  to  be  mine.  I  very  sel- 
dom spoke  of  them  as  mine  simply  out  of  delicacy,  not  wish- 
ing to  seem  greedy  about  property  which  I  knew  my  uncle 
had  given  to  me  as  an  immediate  and  present  gift,  not  post- 
poned until  his  death  but  yet  in  prospect  of  that  event.  My 
uncle  during  many  years  spoke  of  his  death  as  near  at  hand. 
I  considered  the  papers  referred  to  as  very  precious,  but  I 
never  thought  of  them  as  valuable  in  point  of  money  until, 
as  presently  mentioned,  Mr.  Froude  arranged  with  me  to 

147 


APPENDIX 

hold  the  proceeds  of  the  "Reminiscences"  for  me.  The 
only  occasions  upon  which  Mr,  Froude  used  words  which  led 
me  to  think  that  he  did  not  clearly  understand  all  the  papers 
were  mine  were  those  referred  to  in  the  correspondence  of 
February,  1880. 

On  February  16,  1879,  Mr.  Froude  brought  Mr.  Bret 
Harte,  who  was  staying  with  him,  to  visit  my  uncle  in  Cheyne 
Row.  Before  lunch,  while  Mr.  Bret  Harte  was  talking  with 
my  uncle,  Mr.  Froude  said  to  me  (referring  to  my  present 
husband's  father) :  "  Your  uncle  Alick  wrote  the  best  letters 
in  the  family.  They  are  very  interesting  and  I  am  going  to 
give  them  to  you."  I  replied :  "  Oh !  you  are  going  to  send 
me  all  of  them ;  they  are  all  mine."  After  Mr.  Froude  and 
Mr.  Bret  Harte  had  left,  it  occurred  to  me  to  make  sure 
there  should  be  no  mistake  about  the  return  of  the  papers  to 
me.  I  therefore  said  to  my  uncle  I  was  sorry  I  had  sent  so 
many  of  the  papers  to  Mr.  Froude  and  wondered  if  Mr. 
Froude  understood  they  were  to  be  all  returned  to  me.  My 
uncle  replied,  "  Froude  perfectly  understands  that,  for  I  have 
often  said  so  to  him."  I  expressed  a  wish  that  my  uncle 
would  speak  to  Mr.  Froude  again  on  the  subject  so  as  to 
prevent  any  misapprehension,  which  he  promised  to  do. 
Mr.  Froude  used  to  come  to  our  house  twice  a  week,  Tues- 
days and  Fridays,  to  walk  and  latterly  to  drive  out  with  my 
uncle.  On  the  Tuesday  following  the  Sunday  upon  which 
the  above-mentioned  conversation  took  place  my  uncle  drove 
out  with  Mr.  Froude  in  a  hansom  cab.  After  the  drive  and 
after  Mr.  Froude  had  left,  my  uncle  said  to  me :  "  Froude 
perfectly  understands  the  papers  are  yours  and  will  return 
them  all  to  you.     He  has  promised  to  do  so." 

In  February,  1 880,  Mr.  Froude  again  spoke  of  returning 
Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle's  letters.  This  to  me  revived  my 
fear  lest  he  might  not  return  the  others.  I  therefore  again 
raised  the  subject  with  my  uncle  in  February,  1880.  He 
said  to  me :  "  Froude  understands  beyond  any  kind  of  doubt 
that  they  are  yours — it  is  no  use  bothering  him  again."  But 
I  persisted,  and  he  promised  me  to  speak  to  Mr.  Froude 

148 


APPENDIX 

about  it  again  for  the  purpose  of  insuring  that  the  papers 
should  be  returned  to  me  as  soon  as  Mr.  Froude  had  done 
with  them. 

Mr.  Froude's  letter  to  me  of  loth  February,  1880,  which 
I  showed  to  my  uncle,  satisfied  both  my  uncle  and  myself 
that  no  further  question  would  be  raised  on  the  subject. 
"That  I  was  to  have,"  as  Mr.  Froude  there  said,  "  the  entire 
collection  when  he  had  done  with  it,"  appeared  to  me  all  I 
wanted. 

The  occasion  upon  which  the  monetary  value  of  the 
papers  was  first  discussed  was  shortly  after  Mr.  Froude's 
letter  to  my  uncle  of  23rd  September,  1879. 

On  the  20th  of  November,  1879,  my  husband  and  I  dined 
with  Mr.  Froude  at  his  residence,  Mr.  Froude's  son,  Mr. 
Ashley  Froude,  and  his  daughter,  Miss  Margaret  Froude, 
being  present.  On  this  occasion  Mr.  Froude  distinctly 
stated  that  he  would  hold  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  "  Remi- 
niscences "  for  me.  This  promise  was  frequently  repeated 
by  Mr.  Froude,  who,  on  one  occasion,  a  month  before  my 
uncle's  death,  in  the  presence  of  my  husband,  added:  "The 
book  was  written  by  your  uncle,  not  by  me,  and  therefore 
there  would  be  no  propriety  in  my  receiving  the  money  for 
it.  But  of  course  it  will  be  different  with  the  Biography 
which  I  shall  write  myself."  My  husband  and  I  both  assented 
to  this,  and  looked  upon  it  as  settled.  My  uncle  was 
informed  of  this  arrangement  on  the  20th  of  November, 
1879,  by  myself  and  my  husband,  and  subsequently  by  Mr. 
Froude,  and  expressed  his  approval  of  it  as  natural  and 
proper,  so  that  we  regarded  it  as  a  settled  thing. 

After  this  arrangement  had  been  made,  and  possibly  to 
some  extent  influenced  by  it,  I  sent  Mr.  Froude,  for  use  and 
return  to  me,  further  papers  which  my  uncle  had  given  me, 
especially  the  letters  of  my  uncle,  Thomas  Carlyle,  to  his 
brother,  Dr.  John  Carlyle,  a  very  large  collection  of  which, 
extending  over  sixty  years,  were  returned  to  my  uncle, 
Thomas  Carlyle,  by  Dr.  Carlyle's  executor  a  few  months 
after  the  death  of  Dr.  Carlyle  in  September,  1879.     These 

149 


APPENDIX 

my  uncle,  Thomas  Carlyle,  gave  me  for  my  own  as  soon  as 
he  received  them,  and  I,  at  his  wish,  lent  them  to  Mr. 
Froude,  relying  on  his  promise  to  restore  all  the  papers  to 
me  when  used  for  the  purpose  of  the  Biography. 

On  the  2 1  St  of  February,  1881,  the  will  and  codicil  of  my 
uncle  were  read  by  Mr.  Ouvry  in  the  presence  of  Sir  J.  F. 
Stephen  and  myself  and  my  husband,  but  Mr.  Froude  was 
not  present.  Immediately  after  the  will  was  read  Sir  J. 
Stephen  said,  "  There  is  too  the  question  of  the  papers."  I 
answered :  "  Yes ;  Froude  has  no  right  to  say  what  he  said  in 
the  Times,  he  has  no  right  to  burn  them ;  the  papers  are 
mine."  Sir  James  Stephen  said :  "  Do  you  mean  to  say  that 
you  want  a  share  in  the  profits ? "  I  said,  "  No;  but  Froude 
is  to  return  all  the  papers  to  me ;  he  has  promised  to  do  so," 
and  thereupon  I  showed  Sir  James  Stephen  Mr.  Froude's 
letter  of  loth  February,  1 880.  Mr.  Ouvry  then  said :  "  There 
is  too  the  question  of  the  'Reminiscences';  I  think  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  to  have  the  profits  of  that  book."  I  said,  "  Yes; 
Mr.  Froude  has  promised  them  to  me."  Sir  James  Stephen 
then  said  that  what  I  had  said  was  entirely  satisfactory,  and 
proposed  that  it  should  be  reduced  by  him  to  writing. 

I  was  at  the  time  extremely  tired ;  I  had  not  thought  the 
matter  over  nor  taken  either  professional  advice  or  that  of 
my  husband,  and  was  in  consequence  not  at  all  in  a  fit  state 
to  transact  business;  but  alarmed  by  what  I  had  heard 
shortly  before,  that  the  whole  matter  might  have  to  be 
thrown  into  Chancery,  I  consented  to  Sir  James  Stephen's 
suggestion.  Sir  James  Stephen  then  drew  up  a  memoran- 
dum, which  differed  from  that  which  afterwards  passed  in 
this,  that  it  was  said  that  the  papers  were  given  "  by  Mr. 
Carlyle  "  instead  of  simply  given,  and  that  all  the  words  after 
"the  use  to  be  made  of  these  papers"  were  wanting.  I 
objected  to  this,  saying  the  papers  were  sent  by  me,  not  by 
my  uncle,  and  I  strongly  protested  that  Mr.  Froude  had  no 
right  to  burn  any  of  the  papers.  Thereupon  Sir  James 
Stephen  asked  whether  I  thought  that  practically  he  would 
burn  any  of  them,  and  pressed  me  as  to  whether  I  had  not 

150 


APPENDIX 

sent  the  MSS.  by  order  of  my  uncle,  but  I  persisted  this  was 
not  so.  Sir  James  Stephen  then  tore  up  the  first  memoran- 
dum and  wrote  another,  leaving  out  after  given  the  words 
"  by  Mr.  Carlyle  "  and  adding  the  words  at  the  end,  "  On  the 
other  hand  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle,"  etc.,  as  the  paragraph  now 
stands, 

I  agreed  to  the  memorandum  in  this  form,  understanding 
by  it  that  I  was  to  have  the  entire  collection  of  the  MSS. 
with  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  Mr.  Froude  having 
the  profits  of  the  Biography. 

It  was  only  in  this  sense  that  the  memorandum  expressed 
what  I  understood. 

The  parol  evidence  which  was  collected  in  support  of  the 
gift  to  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  of  her  uncle's  papers  is  next 
given. 

Alexander  Carlyle. 

I  am  a  nephew  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle,  a  son  of 
his  brother  Alexander.  I  married  my  cousin,  then  Miss 
Mary  Carlyle  Aitken,  on  the  21st  of  August,  1879.  After 
our  marriage  we  continued  to  live  at  Cheyne  Row  and  to 
have  the  care  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  as  my  wife  had  before  our 
marriage.  We  still  live  at  Cheyne  Row.  I  came  to  Eng- 
land from  Canada  in  July,  1879,  and  therefore  know  nothing 
of  the  manuscripts  of  my  late  uncle  before  that  date.  After 
coming  to  England  I  heard  from  my  wife  that  my  uncle  had 
given  her  his  MSS.  I  was  present  at  and  remember  the 
following  occasion  upon  which  my  uncle  spoke  of  the  MSS. 
as  the  property  of  my  wife: — 

On  the  17th  of  April,  1880,  I  was  reading  with  my  uncle 
in  the  drawing-room  at  Cheyne  Row,  and  my  wife  was 
searching  through  one  of  the  drawers  of  a  pedestal  chest  of 
drawers  in  the  drawing-room  full  of  his  MSS.  My  wife 
brought  the  drawer  to  the  lamp,  beside  which  my  uncle  and 
I  were  reading,  and  taking  out  a  letter  from  Disraeli  to  my 
uncle  and  a  copy  of  his  reply  to  it,  my  wife  said  to  my  uncle, 

151 


APPENDIX 

"There  is  Dizzy's  letter  offering  to  make  you  a  G.C.B. 
Shall  we  show  it  to  Alick?" — meaning  me.  My  uncle 
glanced  in  the  drawer  and  replied  to  my  wife :  "  They  are 
all  your  own;  you  may  do  what  you  like  with  them."  I 
confirm  the  account  given  by  my  wife  (in  her  proof  which  I 
have  read)  of  the  interview  with  Sir  James  Stephen  and  Mr. 
Ouvry  on  the  21st  of  February,  1881,  after  the  will  was  read. 

Mrs.  Jane  Carlyle  Aitken. 

I  was  the  sister  of  the  late  Thomas  Carlyle  and  John 
Aitken  Carlyle,  and  am  the  mother  of  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle,  who 
resided  with  my  brother  Thomas.  My  brother  Dr.  John 
Carlyle  has  frequently  said  to  me  that  the  things  in  the 
house  at  Cheyne  Row  were  left  to  him  by  the  will  of  my 
brother  Thomas,  but  were  my  daughter  Mary's.  The  last 
occasion  upon  which  he  did  so  was  in  the  spring  of  1878  at 
our  house,  The  Hill,  Dumfries,  after  his  return  home  from 
Cheyne  Row.  We  were  speaking  of  our  brother  Thomas's 
failing  health.  My  brother  John  said  tome:  "Mary  has  a 
heavy  task  and  does  it  well;  her  uncle  has  left  her  ^500." 
I  remarked  that  "  it  was  a  limited  provision  in  the  circum- 
stances if  one  had  been  studying  that."  My  brother  replied, 
"  Yes,  but  Tom  and  I  have  arranged  that  all  the  things  in 
the  house  which  have  been  left  to  me  are  Mary's." 

Miss  Ann  Aitken. 

I  am  the  sister  of  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle.  I  resided  for  many 
years  in  the  same  house  with  my  uncle.  Dr.  John  A.  Carlyle. 
On  one  occasion,  about  May,  1878,  my  uncle  John  said  to 
me,  referring  to  my  uncle  Thomas,  "  Your  uncle  has  left  all 
the  things  in  his  house  to  me,  but  they  are  Mary's."  By 
"  Mary  "  he  intended  my  sister,  now  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle.  I  am 
quite  sure  he  used  the  words  "are  Mary's."  He  did  not 
particularise  the  things  in  the  house.  On  the  same  occasion 
my  uncle  John  told  me  it  had  been  agreed  between  him  and 

15.2 


APPENDIX 

my  uncle  Thomas  that  what  my  uncle  Thomas  had  by  his 
will  left  to  my  uncle  John  should  be  my  sister  Mary's. 

Mr.  W.  Allingham.    Late  Editor  of  Frascrs  Magazine. 
{Extract  from  a  letter  written  by  Witness^ 

Towards  the  end  of  1876  I  had  some  talk  with  Mr.  Carlyle 
about  publishing  papers  of  his  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  of  which 
I  was  then  the  Editor.  He  referred  the  matter  to  Miss 
Mary  Aitken,  who  sent  me  several  MSS.  to  examine,  part 
of  which  I  was  very  desirous  to  have  for  publication.  But 
on  going  to  Cheyne  Row  some  days  afterwards  I  found  that 
Miss  Aitken  had  changed  her  mind  and  would  not  allow  the 
articles  to  be  published  by  Longman.  I  argued  a  little 
against  this,  but  she  persisted  in  her  opinion,  and  Carlyle 
left  the  matter  in  her  hands,  so  I  returned  all  the  MSS.  to 
her  and  said  no  more  about  it. 

Paul  Frederick  Friedmann,  Esq.,  of  the  Boltons. 

I  was  a  friend  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle,  with  whom 
I  frequently  went  out  driving.  On  one  of  the  last  occasions 
that  I  went  out  with  Mr.  Carlyle  we  spoke  of  Victor  Hugo. 
I  mentioned  Goethe's  expression  about  Hugo's  plays — 
"bloody  marionettes."  Carlyle  laughed  and  told  me  that 
Goethe  had  written  to  him,  saying  of  Hugo's  works,  "  Von 
dieser  Litteratur  bittc  ich  sick  fern  zu  halt  en"  ("of  this 
literature  I  pray  to  keep  aloof  "),  or  very  nearly  such  words. 
I  asked  him  if  he  had  many  letters  of  Goethe;  he  said,  "  Yes, 
a  good  many."  I  said  they  must  be  very  interesting  and 
asked  what  he  had  done  with  them,  if  he  had  given  them  to 
Lewes  for  Goethe's  Life.  He  said,  "  Oh,  no,  Mary  has  them 
all,"  and  either  added,  "  I  have  given  them  all  to  her "  or 
"They  are  all  hers,"  or  words  to  that  effect,  from  which 
I  clearly  understood  that  they  were  actually  her  property.  I 
said  I  hoped  Miss  Aitken  would  publish  them  some  day. 
He  said,  "  Oh,  yes,  when  I  am  gone,"  or  nearly  such  words. 
We  afterwards  spoke  of  Lewes,  George  Eliot,  Thackeray. 

153 


APPENDIX 

I  inferred  from  Carlyle's  words  that  what  I  had  heard  of 
his  having  given  all  his  papers  to  Miss  Aitken  was  true  and 
forbore  asking  him  (as  I  had  otherwise  intended)  for  a  book 
Goethe  had  given  him.  I  had  been  reminded  of  this  book 
when  he  told  me  of  the  letters  and  had  therefore  intention- 
ally brought  the  conversation  to  the  point  where  he  told  me 
that  the  letters  were  Miss  Aitken's.  We  did  not  speak  of 
his  books  nor  as  far  as  I  remember  of  his  manuscripts  in 
general.  I  remember  no  other  conversation  with  Carlyle 
about  his  manuscripts.  I  have  never  seen  the  letters  of 
Goethe  and  do  not  know  whether  the  passage  really  occurs 
in  them.  I  cannot  swear  to  any  exact  words,  but  I  have  a 
distinct  recollection  of  the  conversation  and  that  I  clearly 
understood  Thomas  Carlyle  to  say  that  the  letters  of  Goethe 
belonged  to  Miss  Aitken.  I  am  quite  certain  that  he  did 
not  say  that  they  would  be  hers. 

Mrs.  E.  a.  Venturi,  Sister-in-law  of  Mr.  Stansfeldy  M.P. 

I  was  a  friend  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle.  I  remem- 
ber talking  with  him  shortly  after  Mazzini's  death  in  1872 
upon  the  question  of  one's  responsibility  with  regard  to 
private  letters  of  friends  and  telling  him  that  it  was  Mazzini's 
habit  to  burn  all  intimate  letters  as  soon  as  possible  after 
receipt  of  them.  He  appeared  to  approve  of  this,  in  Maz- 
zini's case,  but  to  my  surprise  not  as  a  general  rule.  I  dis- 
tinctly remember  that  he  told  me  that  he  had  not  adopted 
this  practice  and  added  that  it  could  lead  to  no  mischief  as 
all  his  letters  and  papers  would  "  ultimately  "  come  to  Miss 
Aitken.  On  a  later  occasion,  probably  before  1877,  Miss 
Aitken,  sitting  beside  her  uncle  Thomas  Carlyle  with  her 
hand  on  his  knee,  told  me,  in  his  presence  and  hearing,  that 
he  (Miss  Aitken  called  him  "  Bester  ")  had  given  her  all  his 
letters  and  papers.  He  appeared  to  me  to  entirely  accept 
what  Miss  Aitken  said,  but  I  do  not  remember  that  he  made 
any  remark. 

154 


APPENDIX 


Mrs.  Annabella  A.  Anstruther,  of  Cassillis  House,  Ayr. 

I  was  a  friend  of  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle.  In  the 
summer  or  autumn  of  1876  Miss  Aitken  made  me  a  present 
from  herself  of  the  following  papers : — 

1.  A  MS.  of  Carlyle  on  a  method  of  roughing 
horses. 

2.  Another  MS.  of  Carlyle  beginning  "  But  how  is 
the  artist  to  guard  himself  from  the  corruptions  of  his 
time  ? " 

3.  Another  small  piece  in  blue  pencil. 

4.  A  separate  autograph  and  several  photographs 
of  Carlyle,  his  wife  and  his  mother. 

Afterwards,  whilst  Carlyle  was  staying  on  a  visit  with  us 
at  Old  Ballikinrain,  I  mentioned  the  gift  to  him.  He  ap- 
peared to  me  to  approve  of  the  gift  as  a  gift  from  his  niece, 
not  from  himself.  One  of  his  expressions  was,  "  Mary  has 
plenty  more  of  that  rubbish,"  meaning  his  handwriting. 
The  impression  I  received  from  the  conversation  was  that 
Miss  Aitken  had  entire  control  of  her  uncle's  papers. 

These  statements,  accompanied  by  a  narrative  of  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle's  case  and  the  whole  of  the  correspondence 
to  date,  including  the  communications  with  Sir  James 
Stephen  which  were  entered  upon  for  the  express  purpose 
of  interchanging  without  reserve  all  that  could  be  said  on 
either  side  for  or  against  the  respective  claims  of  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle,  Froude  and  Carlyle's  executors  and  also 
the  Case  presently  mentioned  which  was  drafted  by  Sir 
James  Stephen  on  behalf  of  Carlyle's  executors,  and  the 
opinion  of  Mr.  Vaughan  Hawkins  upon  it,  were  submitted 
by  Messrs.  Benson  in  July,  1881,  to  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy, 
who  was  asked  to  advise  in  response  to  the  following 
questions : — 

155 


APPENDIX 


Questions  submitted  to  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy. 

"  What  are  the  respective  rights  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle, 
Mr.  Fronde,  Carlyle's  executors,  and  others  in  relation  to — 

"  First,  the  ownership  of  the  MSS.,  letters,  family 
papers  and  materials  generally ; 

"  Secondly,  the  right  of  publication,  and  the  use  of 
the  material  for  that  purpose ; 

"  Thirdly,  the  copyright  and  profits,  and  generally 
what  course  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  is  entitled  to  take 
to  secure  what  she  considers  due  to  her  uncle's  memory 
and  the  benefits  he  intended  for  her  ? " 

Mr.  Cozens-Hardy's  Opinion:— 

Zthjuly,  1 88 1. 

1.  /'nw^/^aV  the  right  to  the  manuscript  letters 
and  family  papers  vests  in  the  executors  of  the  late 
Thomas  Carlyle.  I  think,  however  that  there  is  good 
ground  for  contending  that  the  ownership  of  these 
documents  is  not  vested  in  the  executors,  but  is  vested 
in  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle,  to  whom  they  were  given  by 
her  uncle  in  June,  1875.  It  appears  from  the  accompa- 
nying Statements  that  what  took  place  amounted  to  an 
immediate  pre setit  gift,  as  distinguished  from  an  inten- 
tion to  give,  and  moreover  that  the  fact  of  such  a  gift 
was  repeatedly  acknowledged  by  Mr.  Carlyle  in  a  manner 
which  will  supply  that  corroboration  which  is  necessary 
to  support  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  claim.  This  being 
so,  I  think  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  is  entitled  to  claim  the 
documents  from  Mr.  Froude  or  from  the  executors.  In 
saying  this,  I  do  not  of  course  intend  to  say  that  Mr. 
Froude  may  not  use  for  the  purpose  of  the  Biography 
the  letters  which  were  lent  to  him  by  Mrs.  Carlyle  for 
that  express  purpose. 

2.  I  think  that  the  right  of  publication  passes  with 

156 


APPENDIX 

the  ownership  of  the  letters  and  other  papers,  except  so 
far  as  the  writers  of  any  letters  addressed  to  Mr.  Carlyle 
or  their  legal  personal  representatives  may  interfere  by 
injunction  to  restrain  the  publication. 

3.  I  think  that  the  copyright  and  the  profits  to  be 
derived  from  the  publication  will  also  belong  to  Mrs. 
Carlyle,  subject,  however,  to  this  qualification.  Mrs. 
Carlyle  permitted  Mr.  Froude  to  have  the  documents 
and  to  publish  part  of  them  in  the  volumes  of  "  Remi- 
niscences " ;  and  I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  she  can 
as  of  right  prevent  the  republication  of  the  "  Reminis- 
cences." It  seems  that  in  1879,  before  the  publication 
was  resolved  upon  or  finally  authorised,  Mr.  Froude 
agreed  that  all  the  profits  to  be  derived  from  that  publi- 
cation should  belong  to  Mrs.  Carlyle.  See  his  letters 
of  the  2ist  and  23rd  February,  1881.  But  I  understand 
that  Mrs.  Carlyle  has  agreed  to  allow  Mr.  Froude  to 
retain  ;!^300  out  of  the  profits  arising  from  the  sale  of 
the  "  Reminiscences,"  and  that  Mr.  Froude  has  assented 
to  this  and  agrees  to  assign  the  copyright  to  her. 
Herbert  H.  Cozens-Hardy, 

7,  New  Square,  Lincoln's  Inn. 

Whilst  the  case  upon  which  this  opinion  was  given  was 
being  drafted,  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  heard  that  Sir  James 
Stephen  in  consultation  with  Froude  was  also  drafting  a  case 
on  the  part  of  Carlyle's  executors  for  the  opinion  of  Mr. 
Vaughan  Hawkins  as  to  the  claims  of  the  executors  on 
behalf  of  the  residuary  legatees,  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle, 
therefore,  desired  Messrs.  Benson  to  send  to  Sir  James 
Stephen  the  first  draft  of  the  case  which  they  were  preparing 
on  her  behalf  for  the  double  purpose  of  helping  Sir  James 
Stephen  to  state  the  facts  correctly  and  of  obtaining  from 
him,  for  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy's  consideration,  all  that  either 
he  or  Froude  could  urge  against  her  claims. 

Early  in  June,  1881,  Messrs.  Benson  sent  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle's  case,  so  far  as  it  was  then  drafted,  to  Sir  James 

157 


APPENDIX 

Stephen  without  the  Statements  above  set  out,  which,  not 
being  then  complete,  were  reserved  for  later  communication, 
and  at  his  request  authorised  him  to  communicate  the  draft 
case  to  Mr.  Ouvry  and  Froude,  asking  Sir  James  Stephen, 
however,  to  treat  it  as  "  still  imperfect  and  therefore  sus- 
ceptible without  comment  of  any  corrections  which  further 
consideration  or  research  might  render  necessary." 

Meantime,  without  waiting  for  the  assistance  which,  in 
stating  the  facts  for  Mr.  Vaughan  Hawkins'  opinion,  he 
might  have  obtained  by  communication  with  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle's  solicitors.  Sir  James  Stephen  had,  on  the  13th  of 
May,  1 88 1,  obtained  Mr.  Vaughan  Hawkins'  opinion  in  favour 
of  the  executors'  claims  to  the  papers,  upon  a  statement 
which  is  not  merely  imperfect  in  many  important  particulars, 
but,  in  some,  opposed  to  the  facts  as  we  now  know  them. 

Upon  the  statement  submitted  to  him,  Mr.  Vaughan 
Hawkins'  advice  could  not  have  been  other  than  it  was,  but 
his  opinion  was  without  value,  because  he  was  not  furnished 
with  the  Statements  given  above  which  were  submitted  to 
Mr.  Cozens-Hardy  with  the  corroborative  letters  from  which 
many  quotations  have  already  been  made. 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Vaughan  Hawkins'  opinion,  as  well  as 
the  letters  of  Sir  James  Stephen,  expressing  his  own  views, 
were  submitted  to  and  considered  by  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy 
before  he  wrote  his  opinion. 

On  the  28th  of  June,  1881,  Messrs.  Benson  sent  to  Sir 
James  Stephen  a  copy  of  the  above-mentioned  Statements, 
in  support  of  the  gift  of  the  papers  to  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  in  1875,  suggesting  that  they  would  influence  the 
opinion  he  had  expressed  adverse  to  this  gift,  and  adding, 
"The  case  is  not  a  party  and  party  statement  but  comprises 
all  the  materials  we  have  been  able  to  gather,  whichever  way 
they  tell." 

On  the  5th  of  July,  1881,  Sir  James  Stephen  replied  that 
the  new  matter  had  "  not  weakened,  but  confirmed "  the 
opinion  expressed  in  his  letter  of  the  loth  of  June,  1881, 
and,  after  giving  his  reasons  for  doubting  the  accuracy  of 

158 


APPENDIX 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  account  of  her  uncle's  gift  to  her 
and  saying  that  he  saw  no  reason  to  disbelieve  Froude's 
statement  as  to  the  authority  given  to  him  to  burn  the  letters 
and  papers,  he  proceeded  as  follows : — 

"  No  doubt  the  language  of  Mr.  Froude's  letters  to  the 
Times  favours  Mrs.  Carlyle's  claim,  but  what  he  wrote  in 
1881  cannot  alter  the  legal  effect  of  things  said  and  done 
years  before,  and,  it  must  be  remembered,  that  he  has  always 
admitted  that  Mr.  Carlyle  desired  him  to  return  all  the 
papers  to  Mrs.  Carlyle  when  he  had  done  with  them.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  has  the  papers  and  primd  facie  they 
are  his. 

"  The  claim  of  the  executors  on  behalf  of  the  estate  is  free 
from  the  difficulty  which  always  attends  claims  found  on 
recollections  of  conversations  to  which  there  is  only  one 
living  witness  and  which  took  place  (if  at  all)  several  years 
before  the  claim  is  decided,  but  our  claim  is  open  to  this 
remark,  its  enforcement  would  do  no  good  to  anyone  and 
would  certainly  defeat  Mr.  Carlyle's  intentions  both  by 
depriving  Mrs.  Carlyle  of  the  profits  of  the  '  Reminiscences ' 
and  by  hampering  Mr,  Froude  (to  an  extent  which  depends 
on  the  determination  of  an  entirely  new  and  doubtful  point 
of  law)  in  making  use  of  the  papers  for  biographical 
purposes. 

"The  result  is  that  in  every  view  of  the  case  a  settlement 
appears  advisable,  and  I  earnestly  recommend  the  parties 
concerned  to  adopt  either  the  terms  which  I  proposed  in  my 
last  letter  \i.e.,  the  letter  of  loth  June,  1881,  above  referred 
to]  or  some  modification  of  them.  I  should  be  much  sur- 
prised if  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy,  or  any  independent  person 
whose  opinion  may  be  taken  on  the  subject,  did  not  recognise 
the  force  of  these  observations." 

Messrs.  Benson  replied  on  the  20th  of  July,  1881,  inclosing 
a  copy  of  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy's  opinion,  and  after  dealing 
with  the  reasons  given  by  Sir  James  Stephen  for  doubting 
the  accuracy  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle's  statement,  they 

159 


APPENDIX 

expressed  as  follows  her  response  to  the  suggestions  made 
by  Sir  James  Stephen  in  his  letter  of  the  loth  of  June: — 

"  We  are  desired  to  state  at  the  outset  that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
declines  to  receive  the  proceeds  of  the  '  Reminiscences '  as  a 
gift  from  Mr.  Froude,  but  claims  them  in  accordance  with 
Mr.  Cozens-Hardy's  opinion  as  a  right  for  the  origin  of  which 
she  will  be  indebted  to  her  uncle  and  not  to  Mr.  Froude,  but 
we  do  not  think  a  difference  of  opinion  on  this  point  between 
Mrs.  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Froude  ought  to  affect  any  amicable 
arrangement  which  might  otherwise  be  made. 

"  Having  made  this  statement,  we  are  instructed  that  Mrs. 
Carlyle  is  willing  that  a  friendly  settlement  should  be  effected 
on  the  following:  terms : — 


*o 


"  I .  Mr.  Froude  at  once  to  act  upon  his  letter  to 
the  Times  of  9th  May,  1881,  and  deliver  all  the  papers 
to  Mrs.  Carlyle. 

"2.  The  executors  to  sanction  this  delivery  upon 
having  either  the  written  consent  of  the  residuary  lega- 
tees or  a  substantial  and  approved  indemnity  (which  we 
believe  we  are  in  a  position  to  offer)  against  any  claim 
which  may  be  made  by  any  residuary  legatee,  whose 
written  consent  is  not  obtained,  against  the  executors  in 
respect  of  the  papers  so  delivered. 

"  3.  Mr.  Froude  to  give  up  all  claim  to  any  further 
use  of  or  profit  from  the  papers  so  delivered,  which  Mrs. 
Carlyle  will  treat  as  given  to  her  by  her  uncle  in  his 
lifetime. 

"  4.  On  the  other  hand,  Mrs.  Carlyle  to  give  up  the 
whole  profits,  present  and  future,  as  well  as  the  copy- 
right, of  the  'Reminiscences,'  so  that  as  far  as  Mrs, 
Carlyle  is  concerned,  Mr.  Froude  will  at  once  receive 
for  his  own  benefit  ;^  1,500  now  in  hand  from  this  source." 

Further  correspondence  took  place,  in  the  course  of  which 
there  was  a  practical  recognition  of  the  justice  of  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle's  claim  by  Sir  James  Stephen,  for  on  the 

160 


APPENDIX 

19th  of  August,  1881,  Messrs.  Farrer,  Ouvry  &  Co.  wrote  to 
Messrs.  Benson  in  these  terms :  "  We  send  you  a  copy  of  a 
letter  that  has  been  addressed  to  Mr.  Froude,  and  Sir  Fitz- 
James  Stephen,  who  has  sent  it  to  us,  points  out  that  Mrs. 
A.  Carlyle,  by  giving  the  papers  to  Mr.  Froude  under  the 
circumstances  as  stated  by  herself,  has  induced  him  to  bestow 
several  years  of  great  labour  upon  them,  and  thus  has  prac- 
tically contracted  with  him  that  he  should  write  the  life  of 
the  late  Mr.  Carlyle,  using  the  papers  as  his  materials." 

To  this  Messrs.  Benson  replied  that  "Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle,  without  entirely  concurring  with  Sir  James  Stephen 
as  to  the  extent  of  Mr.  Froude's  labours,  has  so  far  recog- 
nised the  justice  of  the  view  expressed  by  him  as  to  provide 
for  the  payment  of  a  very  considerable  sum  [the  whole 
profits  of  the  'Reminiscences,' in  respect  of  which  £1,^00 
was  in  hand]  to  Mr.  Froude  as  part  of  the  proposed  compro- 
mise." 

In  September,  1881,  a  long  conference  took  place  between 
Sir  James  Stephen  and  Dr.  Benson  at  the  office  of  Messrs. 
Farrer,  Ouvry  &  Co.  with  a  view  to  an  amicable  arrange- 
ment, but  immediately  after  that  conference  Sir  James  Ste- 
phen addressed  a  letter  to  Mr.  Farrer,  to  be  forwarded  to 
Dr.  Benson,  in  which  the  following  passages  occurred : — 

"  I  am  not  quite  sure  whether  in  the  course  of  my  conver- 
sation with  Mr.  Benson  I  made  one  point  clear,  namely,  that 
if  matters  came  to  an  extremity,  Mr.  Froude  will  not  admit 
his  liability,  either  legal  or  moral,  to  give  Mrs.  Carlyle  any 
part  of  the  proceeds  of  the  'Reminiscences.'  He  is,  and 
always  has  been,  willing  to  make  over  the  amount,  less  ;/^300, 
to  her,  if  she  will  accept  it  as  a  present  from  him.  For  the 
sake  of  peace  he  is  willing  that  the  amount,  less  ;i^300,  shall 
be  accepted  by  her  without  any  statement  being  made  as  to 
her  title  to  it,  but  if  she  rejects  the  money  as  a  i)resent  and 
sues  him  for  the  papers  and  the  ;^  1,500,  he  will  stand  on  his 
rights  afid  refuse  to  give  her  anything  at  all  except  what  the 
law  compels  him  to  give,  and  he  would  take  up  this  position 
whether  the  tribunal  chosen  was  a  court  of  law  or  an  arbi- 
II  161 


APPENDIX 

trator.  ,  .  .  Will  you  kindly  send  Mr.  Benson  a  copy  of 
this  ?  I  hope  he  will  allow  me  to  congratulate  him  on  the 
good  feeling  and  gentlemanlike  manner  which  he  showed  in 
a  matter  which  required  much  delicacy  and  also  on  his  firm- 
ness and  acuteness  in  respect  of  his  client's  interests.  I 
may  just  add  that  I  am  quite  convinced  that  Mr.  Froude  will 
not  give  way  on  the  subject  of  writing  Mr.  Carlyle's  Life. 
He  feels  that  it  would  be  injurious  and  humiliating  to  him  to 
do  so,  and  I  entirely  agree  with  him." 

Strange  doctrine  to  fall  from  the  pen  of  a  nineteenth- 
century  jurist!  True,  says  Sir  James  Stephen  in  effect,  in 
his  letter  to  Messrs.  Benson,  of  loth  June,  1881,  Carlyle  in- 
tended his  manuscripts  for  his  niece.  True,  he  added  in  his 
letter  of  the  5th  July  following,  a  claim  to  them  by  his 
executors  would  defeat  his  intentions  and  do  no  good  to  any 
one.  True,  going  back  to  his  letter  of  the  loth  June,  Carlyle 
died  in  the  faith  of  Froude's  engagement,  that  his  niece  who 
solaced  his  declining  years  should  have  the  profits  of  the 
"  Reminiscences,"  and  but  for  this  faith  would  probably  have 
made  better  provision  for  her ;  and  yet !  Unless  Mrs.  Alex- 
ander Carlyle  will  humble  herself  to  accept  as  a  present  from 
Froude,  on  whom  she  had  no  claim,  what  she  owed  to  her 
uncle;  unless  she  will  deny  Froude's  own  statement  that  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  were  written  by  her  uncle,  and  that  there 
would  be  no  propriety  in  his  receiving  the  profits  of  them, 
and  confess  that  on  the  contrary  the  profits  are  his,  and  that 
only  his  generosity  and  not  his  engagement  with  her  uncle 
and  herself  can  make  them  hers ;  unless  she  will  do  all  this, 
then  Froude  will  take  advantage,  and  will  be  morally  entitled 
to  take  advantage,  and  Carlyle's  executors  will  help  him  to 
take  advantage  and  will  be  morally  entitled  to  do  so,  of  the 
flaw  in  her  legal  title  which  Mr.  Cozens-Hardy  denied,  but 
upon  which  Sir  James  Stephen  insisted,  to  defeat  Carlyle's 
intentions,  and  to  deprive  his  niece  of  part  of  the  provision 
made  for  her. 

According  to  Sir  James  Stephen's  letters  of  loth  June  and 
5th  July,  Carlyle's  intentions  and  Froude's  undertakings  to 

162 


APPENDIX 

give  effect  to  them  are  beyond  question,  and  only  the  claims 
of  the  executors  and  residuary  legatees  stand  in  the  way. 
In  September  the  claims  of  the  executors  and  residuary 
legatees,  which  were  never  serious,  have  disappeared,  and  it 
is  Froude  who  is  to  keep  both  papers  and  profits,  unless 
Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  will  solicit  his  bounty.  Froude's 
liability  to  fulfil  his  admitted  engagement  with  Carlyle  and 
his  niece  is  acknowledged,  only  so  long  as  Mrs.  Alexander 
Carlyle  refrains  from  asserting  it.  A  moral  debt  is  wiped 
out  when  the  creditor  insists  on  its  payment ! 

Messrs.  Benson  replied  to  Sir  James  Stephen's  letter  by 
a  letter  to  Messrs.  Farrer,  Ouvry  &  Co.,  which  we  give  in 
full,  as  it  is  a  clear  and  comprehensive  statement  of  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle's  case : — 

r,  Clement's  Inn, 

Zth  October,  1881. 
Dear  Sirs, — 

We  have  your  letter  of  the  20th  of  September,  enclosing 
a  copy  of  Sir  James  Stephen's  letter  to  you  which  he  wished 
us  to  see. 

We  are  unwilling  to  prolong  controversy  on  minor  issues 
which  may  tend  rather  to  obscure  and  complicate  than  clear 
the  main  issue,  but  we  cannot  leave  Mr.  Froude's  view  of 
his  moral  obligations  as  now  expressed  by  Sir  James  Stephen 
on  record  in  writing  without  similarly  recording  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle's reply. 

We  are  dealing  for  the  moment  only  with  the  moral  aspect 
of  a  mixed  question  of  law  and  morals. 

We  say  that  from  this  point  of  view  the  mode  of  settle- 
ment proposed  by  Mr.  Froude  involves  no  concession  what- 
ever on  his  part. 

We  understand  Sir  James  Stephen  to  suggest  that  a  vol- 
untary gift  is  revocable  on  breach  of  an  implied  condition 
that  its  recipient  shall  expressly  admit  its  voluntary  charac- 
ter, and  that  Mr.  Froude's  obligations  in  respect  both  of  the 
profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  and  of  the  disposition  of  the 

163 


APPENDIX 

materials  for  the  "  Biography  "  were  in  their  origin  voluntary 
gifts. 

We  venture  to  doubt  the  major  premiss. 

Mr.  Froude  has  emphatically  denied  the  minor. 

We  purposely  refrain  from  discussing  the  legal  aspect  of 
the  question  involved  in  the  minor  premiss,  but  we  ask  Sir 
James  Stephen  to  consider  what  view  Mr.  Froude  was 
morally  bound  to  take  of  that  question  and  the  view  he 
actually  took. 

First  as  regards  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences."  This 
part  of  the  question  has  been  simplified  by  the  arrangement 
that  Mr.  Froude  shall  retain  ;^300  in  respect  of  his  editorial 
labour  and  the  extra  profit  consequent  upon  the  addition  of 
"  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  "  to  the  book. 

In  speaking  of  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences  "  there- 
fore, we  mean  the  profits  less  ;^300,  and  we  omit  to  take 
further  account  of  the  matters  In  respect  of  which  this  de- 
duction was  arranged.  What  remains  is  to  inquire  whether 
Mr.  Froude  as  a  man  of  strict  and  sensitive  honour  might 
have  retained  for  his  own  use  the  profits  derived  from  the 
publication  for  Mr.  Carlyle  of  a  work  written  by  Mr.  Carlyle. 
Mr.  Froude  thought  not  and  said  so.  Here  are  his  own  words 
to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  a  month  before  the  death  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Carlyle:  "The  book  was  written  by  your  uncle, 
not  by  me,  and  there  would  be  no  propriety  in  my  receiving 
the  money  for  it."  But  this  is  not  all.  Whether  Mr. 
Froude  might  have  retained  the  profits  of  the  "Reminis- 
cences "  with  propriety  or  not,  he  arranged  with  Mr.  Thomas 
Carlyle  in  his  lifetime  that  he  would  not  do  so,  but  would 
treat  them  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Carlyle's  wishes  on  the 
subject  as  belonging  to  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle,  and  Mr.  Thomas 
Carlyle  died  in  the  belief  <-hat  these  profits  were  part  of  the 
provision  he  had  made  for  his  niece.  See  the  published 
correspondence  between  Messrs.  Scribner  and  Messrs. 
Harper  of  New  York.  See  also  Mr.  Froude's  letters  to 
Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  dated  21  February,  1881,  and  23  February, 
1881. 

164 


APPENDIX 

In  the  former  Mr.  Froude  says,  "  Of  course  you  shall  have 
every  farthing  that  comes  from  the 'Reminiscences,'  and  I 
appeal  to  your  good  sense  to  acquit  me  of  having  attempted 
to  go  back  from  an  engagement." 

In  the  latter  Mr.  Froude  warmly  apologises  for  a  confused 
memory  having  "  led  me  to  believe  that  I  v\/as  free  to  ar- 
range the  details  over  again." 

See  also  the  Agreement  on  the  subject  between  Mrs.  A. 
Carlyle  and  Mr.  Froude  effected  by  Sir  James  Stephen  and 
contained  in  Mrs.  Carlyle's  letter  to  him  dated  27  February, 
1 881,  and  his  reply  of  the  same  date.  This  would  seem  to 
include  the  assent  of  the  Executors  independently  of  their 
present  willingness  not  to  interfere  with  any  arrangement 
which  Mr.  Froude  may  agree  to  on  the  subject.  And  finally 
we  would  refer  in  confirmation  of  our  statements  to  the  fact 
that  in  pursuance  of  this  Agreement  ;^  1,500  has  been  actu- 
ally placed  in  trust  for  Mrs.  Carlyle  and  the  interest  of  this 
sum  paid  by  the  Trustee  to  her. 

Secondly,  as  regards  the  ultimate  disposition  of  the  mate- 
rials of  the  "  Biography "  after  having  been  used  by  Mr. 
Froude  for  the  purpose  of  the  "Biography,"  it  is  even 
plainer  if  possible  than  in  the  case  of  the  profits  of  the 
"Reminiscences"  that  Mr.  Froude  is  under  an  obligation 
(whether  legal  or  moral  is  not  to  the  present  purpose)  to 
deliver  them  to  Mrs.  Carlyle,  and  has  not  now,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  case  originally,  any  right  to  destroy  them. 

Here  is  Mr.  Froude's  language  on  the  subject  written  to 
Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  on  the  lOth  February,  1880,  and  shown  to 
Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle  a  year  before  his  death.  "  It  has,  how- 
ever, long  been  settled  that  you  were  to  have  the  entire 
collection  when  I  had  done  with  it.  Even  if  nothing  had 
been  arranged  about  it,  I  should  of  course  have  replaced  it 
in  your  hands." 

Again,  after  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle's  death,  Mr.  Froude 
writes  to  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle  under  date  i8th  February,  1881 : 
"  His  directions  to  me  about  the  papers  were  originally 
emphatic — 'Do  not  spare  the  flame;  the  more  you  burn  the 

165 


APPENDIX 

better.'  It  was  not  until  the  year  before  last  that  he  desired 
me  to  return  them  to  you  when  I  had  done  with  them," 
clearly  implying  that  the  directions  to  burn  were  cancelled 
by  the  subsequent  instructions  named. 

Again,  in  the  Times  of  25th  February,  1881,  Mr.  Froude 
wrote,  "  The  papers  belong  to  his  niece,  Mrs.  A.  Carlyle,  to 
whom  he  directed  me  to  return  them." 

We  venture  to  think  that  with  these  considerations  before 
him.  Sir  James  Stephen  will  admit  that  Mr.  Froude,  as  a 
man  of  sensitive  honour,  cannot  now,  and  whatever  course 
his  dispute  with  Mrs.  Carlyle  may  take,  never  could  refuse 
to  recognise  his  pledges  in  respect  of  the  profits  of  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  and  the  ultimate  disposition  of  the  mate- 
rials for  the  "  Biography  " ;  least  of  all  on  the  ground  that 
Mrs.  Carlyle  concurs  in  Mr.  Froude's  own  estimate  of  the 
character  of  those  pledges. 

If  a  friendly  settlement  should  be  come  to  involving  the 
receipt  by  Mrs.  Carlyle  of  the  profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences  " 
and  the  materials  for  the  "  Biography "  without  the  with- 
drawal of  the  present  contention  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Froude 
that  such  receipt  is  by  his  voluntary  gift,  the  result  would  be 
a  concession  on  the  part,  not  of  Mr.  Froude,  but  of  Mrs. 
Carlyle,  and  one  which  at  present  Mrs.  Carlyle  is  unwilling 
to  make. 

The  only  other  concession  which  Sir  James  Stephen  refers 
to  does  not  proceed  from  Mr.  Froude,  but  from  the  execu- 
tors. We  do  not  attach  much  weight  to  the  suggestion  that 
the  literary  remains  of  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle  may  be  held  to 
belong  to  the  executors  personally,  especially  if  it  is  grounded 
upon  the  supposition  of  their  having  no  intrinsic  value,  for 
we  cannot  doubt  that  if  they  were  offered  to  the  public  as 
they  stand  there  would  be  considerable  competition  for  them. 
We  presume  the  executors  are  taking,  and  will  take,  a 
reasonable  view  of  their  duty,  having  regard  to  the  improba- 
bility of  any  claim  on  the  part  of  the  residuary  legatees  being 
made,  and  if  made,  sustained,  and  the  indemnity  against  any 
such  claim  which  the  executors  can  have  if  they  desire. 

166 


APPENDIX 

On  the  whole  therefore,  we  shall  be  surprised  if,  on  further 
consideration,  Sir  James  Stephen  does  not  agree  with  Mrs. 
Carlyle  that  she  has  good  reason  to  expect  the  four  advan- 
tages enumerated  by  him  even  in  the  event  of  an  adverse 
decision  upon  any  legal  title  which  she  may  set  up. 

Having  thus  recorded  Mrs.  Carlyle's  reply  to  Mr.  Froude's 
views,  as  expressed  by  Sir  James  Stephen  on  minor  issues, 
we  desire  to  impress  upon  Mr.  Froude  that  on  the  main 
issue,  namely,  whether  he  is  to  act  upon  the  offer  publicly 
made  in  his  own  letter  in  the  Times  of  9th  May,  1881,  Mr. 
Froude  has  not  as  yet  given  any  reason  for  not  doing  so 
which  a  man  of  sensitive  honour  could  appreciate  as  adequate. 

Three  reasons  have  been  suggested : — 

1 .  That  Mr.  Froude,  though  willing  if  not  anxious 
to  carry  out  this  offer,  was  unable  to  do  so  because  of 
a  possible  claim  on  the  part  of  the  Executors.  This 
reason  is  no  longer  existent,  as  the  Executors  make  no 
claim  if  Mr.  Froude  and  Mrs.  Carlyle  agree.  This  was 
the  only  reason  suggested  during  the  period  which 
elapsed  between  Mr.  Froude's  letter  to  the  Times  of  the 
9th  of  May  and  your  letter  to  us  of  the  19th  August. 

2.  The  second  reason  suggested  is  that  if  Mr. 
Froude  were  to  act  upon  his  public  offer  he  would 
remain  unremunerated  for  considerable  labour  in  respect 
of  which  he  is  entitled  to  expect  remuneration.  The 
answer  is,  Mrs.  Carlyle  will  meet  this  objection  by 
relinquishing  in  favour  of  Mr.  Froude  her  right  to  the 
profits  of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  which  at  the  present 
moment  amount  to  upwards  of  ^1,500  with  more  to 
come. 

3.  The  third  reason  suggested  is  that  if  Mr.  Froude 
were  to  act  upon  his  public  offer  it  would  place  him  in 
the  humiliating  position  of  bowing  to  an  adverse  public 
verdict  (which  however  Mr.  Froude  does  not  admit  to 
have  been  adverse)  upon  his  literary  taste  as  evinced  by 
the  publication  of  the  "  Reminiscences." 

167 


APPENDIX 

The  answer  is,  first,  that  so  far  as  the  abandonment 
of  the  "  Biography  "  is  humihating  that  humihation  has 
already  been  incurred  by  Mr.  P>oude's  letter  in  the 
Times  of  9th  May,  secondly,  that  it  is  much  more 
humiliating  to  a  man  of  sensitive  honour  to  recede  from 
a  pledge  to  which,  by  publishing  it  in  the  Thnes,  he  has 
called  upon  the  civilised  world  to  bear  witness. 

In  conclusion  we  are  desired  to  say  that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
holds  Mr.  Froude  to  this  pledge,  recognising,  however,  his 
moral  claim  to  compensation  for  literary  labour  lost,  by 
relinquishing  |in  his  favour  her  right  to  the  profits  of  the 
*'  Reminiscences." 

Mrs.  Carlyle  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  Mr.  Froude  has  been 
made  personally  acquainted  with  this  expression  of  her  views. 

We  are, 

Yours  faithfully, 

S.  M.  &  J.  B.  Benson. 
Messrs.  Farrer,  Ouvry  &  Co. 

Further  correspondence  ensued,  from  which  it  appeared 
that  Froude,  supported  by  Sir  James  Stephen,  was  deter- 
mined to  go  on  with  his  "  Life  of  Carlyle,"  and  declined  even 
to  discuss  the  matter  with  mutual  friends  of  his  and  Mrs. 
Alexander  Carlyle,  such  as  Mr.  Stansfeld  or  Professor 
Masson.  It  was  to  prevent  him  from  writing  the  "  Life  " 
that  Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  had  striven,  but  she  was  advised 
that,  having  lent  him  the  papers  for  that  specific  purpose, 
she  could  not  insist  on  their  return  until  that  purpose  was 
accomplished,  and  that  Froude  was  not  legally  bound  by  his 
unconditional  offer  to  return  them  at  once,  if  he  chose  to 
stand  confessed  a  promise-breaker  in  the  sight  of  all  men. 
She  was  therefore  obliged  helplessly  to  wait  and  watch  with 
grief  and  indignation  what  she  regarded  as  the  profanation 
of  her  uncle's  memory. 

Mrs.  Alexander  Carlyle  claimed  and  received  the  profits 
of  the  "  Reminiscences,"  less  ;^300  which  went  to  Froude, 

168 


APPENDIX 

not  as  a  gift  from  Froude,  but  as  a  part  of  the  provision  her 
uncle  had  made  for  her,  and  ultimately,  when  the  mischief 
of  the  "  Life  "  was  done,  all  the  papers  which  Froude  had 
claimed  as  his  own  and  had  maintained  his  right  to  burn 
were  returned  to  her.  These  papers  are  preserved,  and 
amongst  them  are  many,  still  unpublished,  of  profound 
interest,  which,  when  they  appear,  will  help  further  to  dis- 
close the  great  injustice  done  to  Carlyle  by  Froude. 

II. 

Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  on  Froude. 

In  recent  discussions  on  the  Carlyle  controversy  nothing 
has  been  more  remarkable  than  the  entire  ignorance  of  its 
origins  and  merits  betrayed^  by  some  of  those  who  have 
written  about  it,  especially  by  those  who  have  done  so  most 
dogmatically.  This  is  no  doubt  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
Press  is  now  largely  manned  by  young  men  who  knew  not 
Thomas,  or  James  Anthony,  and  who  have  not  access  to  the 
crushing  criticisms  with  which  the  writings  of  the  latter 
about  the  former  were  received  at  the  time  of  their  appear- 
ance. Of  these  criticisms  there  were  none  more  crushing, 
albeit  gently  and  even  gingerly  applied,  than  those  of  Pro- 
fessor Charles  Eliot  Norton  in  his  Edition  of  the  "  Reminis- 
cences" and  of  the  "Early  Letters"  of  Carlyle.  These 
must .  have  been  pehie  forte  el  dure  to  Froude,  but  he 
endured  them  silently  and  no  compurgators  appeared.  It 
is  only  now  when  the  books  containing  them  are  only  to  be 
met  with  in  some  second-hand  bookseller's  shop,  that  an 
attempt  is  made  in  "  My  Relations  with  Carlyle  " — a  feeble 
and  futile  attempt — to  answer  one  or  two  of  the  least  damag- 
ing of  them.  As  Professor  Norton  is  an  eminent  authority 
amongst  literary  men,  both  in  this  country  and  in  America, 
we  think  it  well  to  recall  one  or  two  of  his  strictures  on 
Froude's  biographical  methods  in  addition  to  those  referred 
to  in  the  text. 

169 


APPENDIX 

With  reference  to  Froude's  "  Life  of  Carlyle,"  Professor 
Norton  writes : — 

" '  Express  biography  of  me  I  had  really  rather  that  there 
should  be  none,'  said  Carlyle  in  his  Will,  and  a  biography  of 
him,  correct  at  least  if  meagre,  might  perhaps  have  been 
gathered  from  his  letters,  his  Remmiscejices  and  the  Memo- 
rials of  Jane  Welsh.  Mr.  Froude,  however,  thought  other- 
wise, and  has  given  to  the  public  an  'express  biography  of 
him.'  The  view  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  character  presented  in  this 
biography  has  not  approved  itself  to  many  of  those  who  knew 
Carlyle  best.  It  may  be  a  striking  picture,  but  it  is  not  a 
good  portrait. 

"For  the  present,  at  least,  it  appears  impracticable  to 
prepare  another  formal  biography.  The  peculiar  style  of 
Mr.  Froude's  performance,  already  in  possession  of  the  field, 
might  perhaps  put  a  portrait  of  Carlyle  drawn  by  a  hand 
more  faithful  to  nature,  and  less  skilled  in  fine  artifices  than 
his  own,  at  a  temporary  disadvantage  with  the  bulk  of  readers. 
But  it  has  seemed  right  to  print  some  of  Carlyle's  letters  in 
such  wise  that  with  his  Reminiscences  they  might  serve  as  a 
partial  autobiography,  and  illustrate  his  character  by  unques- 
tionable evidence.  They  do  not  indeed  afford  a  complete 
portrait ;  but  so  far  as  they  go  the  line  will  be  correct." 

With  regard  to  the  love  letters.  Professor  Norton  writes : — 

"As  to  what  use  I  might  be  justified  in  making  of  another 
series  of  letters  at  my  disposal,  those  from  Carlyle  to  Miss 
Welsh  from  their  first  acquaintance  in  1821  until  their  mar- 
riage in  1826,  I  have  felt  grave  doubts.  The  letters  of  lovers 
are  sacred  confidences,  whose  sanctity  none  ought  to  violate. 
Mr.  Froude's  use  of  these  letters  seems  to  me,  on  general 
grounds,  unjustifiable,  and  the  motives  he  alleges  for  it 
inadequate.  But  Carlyle  himself  had  strictly  forbidden  their 
printing.  Wlien  he  was  editing  the  Letters  and  Memorials 
of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  of  her  letters  to  him,  and  of  his  to 
her,  which  were  written  before  their  marriage,  only  one 

170 


APPENDIX 

short  note  from  Miss  Welsh,  dated  3rd  September,  1825, 
printed  by  Mr.  Froude  i^Lifc,  I.,  308,  309),  could  be  found; 
the  rest  were  missing.  To  the  copy  of  this  short  note 
Carlyle  appends  the  words:  'In  pencil  all  but  the  address. 
Original  strangely  saved ;  and  found  accidentally  in  one  of 
the  presses  to-day.  Her  note,  when  put  down  by  the  coach, 
on  that  visit  to  us  at  Hoddam  Hill  in  September,  1825! 
How  mournful  now,  how  beautiful  and  strange !  A  relic  to 
me  priceless  (T.  C,  12th  March,  1868).'  As  to  the  then 
missing  Letters  written  before  their  marriage,  his  and  Miss 
Welsh's,  Carlyle,  in  the  original  manuscript  from  which  the 
copy  given  to  Mr.  Froude  was  made,  says :  '  My  strict  com- 
mand now  is,  "  burn  them,  if  ever  found.  Let  no  third  party 
read  them ;  let  no  printing  of  them,  or  of  any  part  of  them, 
be  ever  thought  of  by  those  who  love  me ! " ' 

"  I  decided  not  to  open  the  parcels  containing  these  letters. 
But  I  was  gradually  led  by  many  facts  to  the  conviction  that 
Mr.  Froude  had  distorted  their  significance,  and  had  given  a 
view  of  the  relations  between  Carlyle  and  his  future  wife,  in 
essential  respects  incorrect  and  injurious  to  their  memory. 
I  therefore  felt  obliged  to  read  these  letters,  which  I  have 
done  with  extreme  reluctance,  and  with  reverential  respect 
for  the  sacredness  of  their  contents.  The  conviction  which 
determined  me  to  read  them  was  confirmed  by  the  perusal. 
The  question  then  arose  whether  further  publication  of  them 
was  justifiable  for  the  sake  of  correcting  the  view  presented 
by  Mr.  Froude.  The  answer  seemed  plain,  that  only  such 
of  these  letters,  or  such  portions  of  them,  as  had  not  any 
specifically  private  character,  could  rightly  be  printed.  I 
have,  therefore,  printed  comparatively  few  of  Carlyle's  letters 
to  Miss  Welsh,  while,  in  an  Appendix  to  Volume  II.,  I  have 
tried  to  set  right  some  of  the  facts  misrepresented  by  Mr. 
Froude,  and  to  show  his  method  of  dealing  with  his  materials." 

"The  nineteenth  chapter  of  the  first  volume  of  Mr. 
Froude's  Life  is  in  great  part  occupied  with  an  account  of 
various  projects  considered  by  Carlyle  and  Miss  Welsh,  after 

171 


APPENDIX 

their  engagement,  in  regard  to  a  place  of  residence  and  other 
necessary  arrangements  preliminary  to  marriage.  Mr. 
Froude  paints  Carlyle  as  throughout  selfish  and  inconsiderate 
of  the  interests  of  Miss  Welsh  and  her  Mother.  But  the 
letters  which  he  prints  complete  or  in  part,  as  well  as  those 
which  he  does  not  print,  do  not  seem  to  support  this  view. 
'However  deeply,'  he  says,  'she  honoured  her  chosen  hus- 
band, she  could  not  hide  from  herself  that  he  was  selfish — 
extremely  selfish'  (page  337).  This  charge  Miss  Welsh 
may  be  allowed  to  deny  for  herself.  '  I  think  you  nothing 
but  what  is  noble  and  wise.'  'At  the  bottom  of  my  heart, 
far  from  censuring,  I  approve  of  your  whole  conduct '  (4th 
March,  1826).  'It  is  now  five  years  since  we  first  met — five 
blessed  years !  During  that  period  my  opinion  of  you  has 
never  wavered,  but  gone  on  deliberately  rising  to  a  higher 
and  higher  degree  of  regard'  (28th  June,  1826). 

"  The  apparent  disposition  to  represent  in  an  unpleasant 
light  the  character  and  conduct  of  Carlyle,  as  well  as  of  Miss 
Welsh  and  her  Mother,  which  marks  Mr.  Fronde's  narrative, 
is  displayed  in  many  minor  disparaging  statements,  so  made 
as  to  avoid  arousing  suspicion  of  their  having  little  or  no 
foundation,  and  arranged  so  as  ^to  contribute  artfully  to  the 
general  effect  of  depreciation.  A  single  instance  will  suffice 
for  illustration.  On  page  337  Mr.  Froude  says:  'For  her 
daughter's  sake  she  [Mrs.  Welsh]  was  willing  to  make  an 
effort  to  like  him,  and,  since  the  marriage  was  to  be  either 
to  live  with  him  or  to  accept  him  as  her  son-in-law  in  her  own 
house  and  in  her  own  circle.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Welsh  had  a  large  ac- 
quaintance. He  liked  none  of  them,  and  "  her  visitors  would 
neither  be  diminished  in  numbers,  nor  bettered  in  quality." 
No !  he  must  have  the  small  house  in  Edinburgh ;  and  "  the 
moment  he  was  master  of  a  house  the  first  use  he  would  turn 
it  to  would  be  to  slam  the  door  against  nauseous  intruders." ' 
The  fact  is  that  no  such  plan  as  would  appear  from  Mr. 
Froude's  statement  was  in  question.  The  plan  was,  as  Miss 
Welsh  sets  it  forth  in  a  letter  of  ist  February,  1826,  that 
Carlyle  was  to  hire  a  little  house  in  Edinburgh,  'and  next 

172 


APPENDIX 

November  we  are  to — hire  one  within  some  dozen  yards  of 
it,  so  that  we  may  all  live  together  like  one  family  until  such 
time  as  we  are  married,  and  after.  I  had  infinite  trouble  in 
bringing  my  mother  to  give  ear  to  this  magnificent  project. 
She  was  clear  for  giving  up  fortune,  house-gear,  everything 
to  you  and  I  [sic]  and  going  to  live  with  my  poor  old  grand- 
father at  Templand.  .  .  .  But  how  do  you  relish  my  plan  ? 
Should  you  not  like  to  have  such  agreeable  neighbours  ?  We 
would  walk  together  every  day,  and  you  would  come  and 
take  tea  with  us  at  night.  To  me  it  seems  as  if  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  were  at  hand.'  To  this  Carlyle  replied,  9th 
February :  '  What  a  bright  project  you  have  formed !  Ma- 
tured in  a  single  night,  like  Jack's  Bean  in  the  Nursery  Tale, 
and  with  houses  in  it  too!  Ah,  Jane,  Jane,  I  fear  it  will 
never  answer  half  so  well  in  practice  as  [it]  does  on  paper. 
It  is  impossible  for  two  households  to  live  as  if  they  were  one ; 
doubly  impossible  (if  there  were  degrees  of  impossibility)  in 
the  present  circumstances.  I  shall  never  get  any  enjoyment 
of  your  company  till  you  are  all  my  own.  How  often  have 
y©u  seen  me  with  pleasure  in  the  presence  of  others .?  How 
often  with  positive  dissatisfaction?  For  your  own  sake  I 
should  rejoice  to  learn  that  you  were  settled  in  Edinburgh; 
a  scene  much  fitter  for  you  than  your  present  one :  but  I 
had  rather  that  it  were  with  me  than  with  any  other.  Are 
you  sure  that  the  number  of  parties  and  formal  visitors 
would  be  diminished  in  number  or  bettered  in  quality,  accord- 
ing to  the  present  scheme  ? '  [This  refers  to  Miss  Welsh's 
frequent  complaint  on  this  score.  In  one  of  her  last  letters, 
8th  December,  1825,  she  had  spoken  of  recent  visitors  at 
Haddington,  and  declared,  'This  has  been  a  more  terrible 
infliction  than  anything  that  befell  our  friend  Job.'  Carlyle 
goes  on]  '  My  very  heart  also  sickens  at  these  things :  the 
moment  I  am  master  of  a  house  the  first  use  I  turn  it  to  will 
be  to  slam  the  door  of  it  on  the  face  of  nauseous  intrusions 
[not  'intruders,'  as  Mr.  Froude  prints],  of  all  sorts  which  it 
can  exclude.* 

"On  page  342  Mr.  Froude  says:  'When  it  had  been  pro- 

173 


APPENDIX 

posed  that  he  should  live  with  Mrs.  Welsh  at  Haddington, 
he  would  by  consenting  have  spared  the  separation  of  a 
mother  from  an  only  child,  and  would  not  perhaps  have  hurt 
his  own  intellect  by  an  effort  of  self-denial.' 

"  No  proposal  to  live  with  Mrs.  Welsh  at  Haddington  was 
ever  made.  In  a  letter  of  i6th  March,  1826,  a  part  of 
which,  including  the  following  sentences,  is  printed  by 
Mr.  Froude  himself  (page  343),  Miss  Welsh  says:  'My 
mother,  like  myself,  has  ceased  to  feel  any  contentment  in 
this  pitiful  [not  'hateful'  as  printed]  Haddington,  and  is 
bent  on  disposing  of  our  house  here  as  soon  as  may  be, 
and  hiring  one  elsewhere.  Why  should  it  not  be  in  the 
vicinity  of  Edinburgh  after  all?  and  why  should  not  you 
live  with  your  wife  in  her  [not  'your,'  as  printed]  mother's 
house  ? * 

"There  is  no  foundation  whatever  for  the  statements 
(page  336)  that  'all  difficulties  might  be  got  over  ...  if  the 
family  could  be  kept  together,'  and  that  'this  ;_arrangement 
occurred  to  every  one  who  was  interested  in  the  Welshs' 
welfare  as  the  most  obviously  desirable.'  Mrs,  Welsh's 
*  consent  to  take  Carlyle  into  the  family  .  .  .  made  Miss 
Welsh  perfectly  happy.'  Mrs.  Welsh's  consent  does  not 
appear  to  have  ever  been  asked,  much  less  to  have  been 
given  to  any  such  arrangement.  In  a  part  of  Miss  Welsh's 
letter  of  i6th  March,  not  quoted  by  Mr.  Froude,  she  says: 
'  I  will  propose  the  thing  to  my  mother,'  that  is,  the  project 
that  they  should  all  live  together,  in  case  Carlyle  should 
approve  it.  He  wisely  did  not  approve  it.  Mr.  Froude's 
account  of  the  whole  matter  is  a  tissue  of  confusion  and  mis- 
representation. 

"  One  more  example  of  Mr.  Froude's  method,  and  I  have 
done.  The  following  passage  is  from  page  358,  it  refers  to 
arrangements  for  the  journey  to  Edinburgh  after  the  wed- 
ding. 'Carlyle,  thrifty  always,  considered  it  might  be  expe- 
dient to  "take  seats  in  the  coach  from  Dumfries."  The 
coach  would  be  safer  than  a  carriage,  more  certain  of  arriv- 
ing, etc.    So  nervous  was  he,  too,  that  he  wished  his  brother 

174 


APPENDIX 

John  to  accompany  them  on  their  journey — at  least  part  of 
the  way.' 

"  What  foundation  this  insinuation  of  mean  and  tasteless 
thrift  on  Carlyle's  part,  and  of  silly  nervousness,  possesses, 
may  be  seen  from  the  following  extracts  from  a  letter  of 
Carlyle's  of  19th  September.  'One  other  most  humble  care 
is  whether  we  can  calculate  on  getting  post  horses  and 
chaises  all  the  way  to  Edinburgh  without  danger  of  let,  or 
[if]  it  would  not  be  better  to  take  seats  in  the  coach  for 
some  part  of  it .?  In  this  matter  I  suppose  you  can  give  me 
no  light ;  perhaps  your  mother  might.  At  all  events  tell  me 
your  taste  in  the  business,  for  the  coach  is  sure,  if  the  other 
is  not.  ,  .  .  John  and  I  will  come  to  Glendinning's  Inn  the 
night  before;  he  may  ride  with  us  the  first  stage  if  you  like; 
then  come  back  with  the  chaise,  and  return  home  on  the 
back  of  Larry,  richer  by  one  sister  (in  relations)  than  he 
ever  was.     Poor  Jack ! ' 

"  Such  is  the  treatment  that  the  most  sacred  parts  of  the 
lives  of  Carlyle  and  his  wife  receive  at  the  hands  of  his 
trusted  biographer !  There  is  no  need,  I  believe,  to  speak 
of  it  in  the  terms  it  deserves. 

"  The  lives  of  Carlyle  and  his  wife  are  not  represented  as 
they  were  in  this  book  of  Mr.  Froude's.  There  was  much 
that  was  sorrowful  in  their  experience ;  much  that  was  sad 
in  their  relations  to  each  other.  Their  mutual  love  did  not 
make  them  happy,  did  not  supply  them  with  the  self-control 
required  for  happiness.  Their  faults  often  prevailed  against 
their  love,  and  yet  'with  a  thousand  faults  they  were  both,' 
as  Carlyle  said  to  Miss  Welsh  (25th  May,  1823),  'true-hearted 
people.'  And  through  all  the  dark  vicissitudes  of  life  love 
did  not  desert  them.  Blame  each  of  them  as  one  may  for 
carelessness,  hardness,  bitterness,  in  the  course  of  the  years, 
one  reads  their  lives  wholly  wrong  unless  he  read  in  them 
that  the  love  that  had  united  them  was  beyond  the  power  of 
fate  and  fault  to  ruin  utterly,  that  more  permanent  than 
aught  else  it  abided  in  the  heart  of  each,  and  that  in  what 
they  were  to  each  other  it  remained  the  unalterable  element." 

175 


APPENDIX 

III. 

Mrs.  Oliphant  on  Mrs.  Carlyle  and  Froude. 

Mrs.  Oliphant  was  united  by  ties  of  the  closest  friendship 
to  Mrs.  Carlyle  in  her  later  years,  and  had  special  qualifica- 
tions for  understanding  her  highly  complex,  sensitive,  and 
mobile  nature.  Herself  characteristically  Scotch,  and  with 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  her  countrywomen,  she  could  enter 
with  sympathetic  insight  into  those  feelings  and  habits  of 
thought  of  her  friend,  having  their  origin  in  inheritance  and 
early  nurture,  which  to  the  Southerner  must  often  have 
remained  obscure  and  unintelligible.  Practised  in  the  analy- 
sis of  that  puzzling  and  subtle  compound — the  female  heart 
— ^her  Miss  Majoribanks,  her  Phoebe  Beecham,  and  her  Julia 
Herbert,  show  to  what  mastery  in  its  chemistry  she  had 
attained — she  was  able  to  distinguish  with  delicate  precision 
the  true  metal  in  Mrs.  Carlyle's  nature  from  the  alloys  fused 
into  it  by  sickness  and  chagrin.  An  expert  in  biography — 
her  "  Life  of  Edward  Irving  "  is  an  admirable  performance 
— she  knew  how  far  in  this  species  of  literature  revelations 
could  properly  go,  and  how  necessary  to  it,  is  not  only  enthu- 
siasm, but  sober  judgment,  a  sense  of  proportion  and  fidelity 
to  truth.  She  was,  therefore,  singularly  well  entitled  to 
judge  of  Froude's  representation  of  her  friend,  and  we  should 
like  to  be  able  to  reproduce  the  whole  of  her  withering 
denunciation  of  him  and  his  methods  contained  in  an  article 
which  appeared  in  the  "  Contemporary  Review "  for  May, 
1 883,  and  which  was  allowed  to  pass  unanswered,  although  it 
was  as  unsparing  in  its  criticism  as  the  Introduction  and 
Notes  to  the  "  New  Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh 
Carlyle,"  which  are  said  to  have  provoked  the  publication  of 
"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle."  We  must,  however,  content 
ourselves  with  one  or  two  extracts  bearing  in  an  illuminative 
way  on  points  which  have  been  dealt  with  in  the  text. 

With  regard  to  "The  Letters  and  Memorials,"  as  issued 
by  Froude,  Mrs.  Oliphant  says : — 

176 


APPENDIX 

"  Mrs.  Carlyle,  the  writer  of  the  letters  now  given  to  the 
world  in  three  large  volumes,  following  in  the  wake  of  four 
other  large  volumes — all  given  to  the  elucidation  of  a  portion 
of  the  life  of  a  great  writer,  to  whom  very  few  things  ever 
happened — has  had  a  cruel  fate  since  the  death  of  her  hus- 
band deprived  her  of  her  last  bulwark  against  that  Nemesis 
known  amongst  men  by  the  name  of  Froude.  Her  fate  is 
all  the  harder  that  she  really  has  done  nothing  to  deserve  it. 
She  narrated  freely  all  the  events  of  her  life  as  they  occurred, 
according  to  the  humour  of  the  moment,  and  the  gift  that 
was  in  her :  which  was  a  very  rare  and  fine  gift,  but  one  that 
naturally  led  to  an  instinctive  seizing  of  all  possible  dramatic 
effects,  and  much  humorous  heightening  of  colour  and  deep- 
ening of  interest.  Her  power  of  story-telling  was  extraordi- 
nary, as  well  as  the  whimsical  humour  that  took  hold  of 
every  ludicrous  incident,  and  made  out  of  a  walk  in  the 
streets  a  whole  amusing  Odyssey  of  adventure ;  and  it  was 
one  of  the  chief  amusements  of  her  house  and  her  friends. 
What  she  thus  did  m  speech  she  did  also  in  her  letters,  with 
a  vivacity  and  humour  which  lend  something  interesting 
even  to  the  hundredth  headache,  domestic  squabble,  or  house- 
cleaning  recorded.  But  all  this  was  for  her  friends ;  there  is 
not  the  slightest  evidence  that  she,  at  least,  even  intended 
these  narratives  for  the  world.  She  was  the  proudest 
woman — as  proud  and  tenacious  of  her  dignity  as  a  savage 
chief.  And  of  all  things  in  the  world,  to  be  placed  on  a 
pedestal  before  men  as  a  domestic  martyr,  an  unhappy  wife, 
the  victim  of  a  harsh  husband,  is  the  last  which  she  would 
have  tolerated.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  her  whole  existence  has 
been  violated,  every  scrap  of  decent  drapery  torn  from  her, 
and  herself  exhibited  as  perhaps  never  modest  and  proud 
matron  was  before  to  the  comments  of  the  world.  Carlyle 
himself  rushed  upon  his  fate  by  his  will  and  choice,  by  foolish 
belief  in  the  flattering  suggestion  that  everything  that  con- 
cerned him  must  be  interesting  to  the  world,  and  by  a  mis- 
placed and  too  boundless  trust  in  the  friends  of  his  later  life. 
But  Mrs.  Carlyle  did  nothing  to  lay  herself  open  to  this  fate. 
12  177 


APPENDIX 

« 

She  did  not  confide  her  reputation  to  Mr.  Froude,  or  give 
him  leave  to  unveil  her  inmost  life  according  to  his  own 
interpretation  of  it :  and  it  is  thus  doubly  hard  upon  her  that 
she  should  have  been  made  to  play  the  part  of  heroine  in  the 
tragedy,  which  his  pictorial  and  artistic  instincts  have  made 
out  of  his  master's  life. 

"  It  would  be  [in  vain  to  attempt  to  set  this  injured  and 
outraged  woman  right  with  the  world  in  respect  of  the 
earlier  portion  of  her  life,  to  which  the  biographer  of  her 
husband  has  given  the  turn  that  pleased  him,  under  the 
almost,  if  not  altogether,  unanimous  protest  of  all  who  knew 
her,  but  quite  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  crowd  who  did  not, 
and  to  whom,  indeed,  such  a  fine  conventional  example  of 
the  hard  fate  of  the  wife  of  a  man  of  genius  was,  perhaps, 
never  afforded  before.  We  may,  perhaps,  be  permitted, 
however,  to  say,  though  with  little  hope  of  convincing  any 
reader  unacquainted  with  the  class  to  which  Mrs.  Carlyle 
belonged,  or  either  traditionally  or  personally  with  the  Scot- 
land of  her  time,  that  the  assumption  upon  which  Mr. 
Froude  goes,  of  her  immeasurable  social  superiority,  and  the 
tremendous  descent  she  made  in  becoming  the  housekeeper 
and  almost  the  domestic  servant  of  her  husband,  is  a  mistake 
and  misconception  of  the  most  fundamental  kind.  It  has 
indeed  the  justification  of  Carlyle's  own  magniloquent 
description: — 'From  birth  upwards  she  had  lived  in  opu- 
lence '  repeated  in  these  volumes ;  but  then  Carlyle  described 
his  little  house  in  Chelsea  as  made  into  a  sort  of  palace  by 
her  exertions,  which  Mr.  Froude  and  all  her  friends  are 
aware  was  a  good  deal  more  than  the  fact.  The  'opulence* 
of  the  country  doctor's  daughter  was  something  of  the  same 
kind.  Modest  comfort,  even  luxury  in  a  sober  way,  the 
highest  estimation,  and  all  the  petting  and  pleasures  that  an 
only  beloved  child  could  be  surrounded  with,  she  no  doubt 
had.  But  life  in  Haddington  in  the  first  quarter  of  this 
century  was  not  like  life  in  South  Kensington  in  the  present 
day.  The  woman's  share  of  the  world's  work  was  very  dis- 
tinct, and  was  despised  by  no  one.    There  is  no  evidence 

178 


APPENDIX 

that  Dr.  Welsh  was  ever  rich — so  far,  indeed,  is  the  evidence 
against  this,  that  his  daughter  had  to  make  over  the  Httle 
property  of  Craigenputtock,  in  order  to  secure  her  mother's 
independence,  leaving  herself  penniless.  But  even  had  she 
been  left  with  a  dot,  proportioned  to  her  position,  and  had 
she  married  one  of  her  father's  assistants,  or  a  neighbouring 
minister — her  natural  fate — there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  she  would  have  been  much  more  elevated  above  the 
cares  of  common  life  than  she  was  as  the  wife  of  Thomas 
Carlyle.  .  .  .  The  present  writer,  though  of  a  later  genera- 
tion than  Mrs.  Carlyle,  was  trained  to  believe  that  a  woman 
should  be  able  to  'turn  her  hand '  to  any  domestic  duty  that 
might  be  necessary.  And  the  pathetic  picture  of  an  elegant 
young  lady  descending  from  her  elevated  sphere  to  make  the 
bread,  and  even  to  mend  the  trousers  of  her  husband,  which 
has  touched  the  sympathetic  public  to  such  indignation,  is 
ludicrous  to  those  to  whom  the  fact  of  both  positions  is 
known." 

With  reference  to  the  conjugal  relations  of  the  Carlyles, 
Mrs.  Oliphant  writes: — 

"  We  confess  for  our  own  part  that  the  manner  of  mind 
which  can  deduce  from  this  long  autobiography  an  idea  inju- 
rious to  the  perfect  union  of  these  two  kindred  souls,  is  to 
us  incomprehensible.  They  tormented  each  other,  but  not 
half  as  much  as  each  tormented  him  and  herself ;  they  were 
too  like  each  other,  suffering  in  the  same  way  from  nerves 
disordered  and  digestion  impaired,  and  excessive  self-con- 
sciousness, and  the  absence  of  all  other  objects  in  their  life. 
They  were,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  everything  to 
each  other — for  good  and  evil,  sole  comforters,  chief  tor- 
menters.  'Ill  to  hae  but  waur  to  want,'  says  the  proverb, 
which  must  have  been  framed  in  view  of  some  such  exagger- 
ated pair;  perhaps,  since  the  proverb  is  Scotch,  the  condi- 
tions of  mind  may  be  a  national  one.  Sometimes  Carlyle 
was  'ill  to  have,*  but  it  is  abundantly  evident  that  he  was 
'waur  to  want,' — i.e.,  to  be  without — to  his  wife.  To  him, 
though  he  wounded  her  in  a  hundred  small  matters,  there  is 

179 


APPENDIX 

no  evidence  that  she  was  ever  anything  else  than  the  most 
desirable  of  women,  understood  and  acknowledged  as  the 
setter-right  of  all  things,  the  providence  and  first  authority 
of  life. 

"  If  these  two  remarkable  people  had  been,  like  others, 
allowed  without  any  theory  to  tell  their  own  story,  and 
express  their  own  sentiments,  what  we  should  now  do  would 
be  to  give  our  readers  a  glimpse,  tranquilly,  of  the  domestic 
economy  of  that  little  house,  of  which  its  mistress  was  justly 
proud,  as  a  triumph  of  her  own  exertions,  and  its  master 
somewhat  grandiloquent  upon,  as  something  in  itself  more 
beautiful  and  remarkable  than  any  house  in  Cheyne  Row 
could  ever  be.  We  would  tell  them  of  her  tea-parties,  her 
evening  visitors,  of  the  little  Peasweep  of  a  maid  who  insisted 
on  bringing  up  four  teacups  every  evening,  while  Mrs.  Carlyle 
and  her  mother  were  alone  in  the  house,  with  a  conviction, 
never  disappointed,  that 'the  gentlemen'  would  drop  in  to 
use  them ;  of  how  she  bought  her  sofa,  and  adapted  an  old 
mattress  to  it,  and  made  a  cover  for  it,  and  so  procured  this 
comfort,  at  the  small  cost  of  one  pound,  out  of  her  own 
private  pocket ;  of  how  the  cocks  and  hens  next  door,  and 
the  dog  that  would  bark,  and  even  the  piano  on  the  other 
side  of  the  party-wall,  were  'written  down '  by  appeals  to  the 
magnanimity  of  the  owners,  on  behalf  of  the  unfortunate 
man  of  genius  who  could  not  get  his  books  written,  or  even 
by  bribes  cleverly  administered  when  persuasion  and  reason 
both  failed.  The  pages  teem  with  domestic  incidents  in 
every  kind  of  ornamental  setting,  all  told  with  such  an  unfail- 
ing life  and  grace,  that,  had  the  facts  themselves  been  of  the 
first  importance,  they  could  not  have  charmed  us  more ;  and 
we  do  not  grudge  the  three  big  volumes  so  filled,  in  which 
there  is  not  from  beginning  to  end  an  event  more  important 
than  new  painting  and  papering,  new  maid-servants,  an  ill- 
ness or  an  expedition.  But  as  circumstances  stand,  the 
reader  is  not  sufficiently  easy  in  his  mind  to  be  content  with 
these,  but  has  been  so  fretted  and  troubled  by  Mr.  Froude 
and  his  theories,  and  the  determination  which  moulds  all  that 

1 80 


APPENDIX 

gentleman's  thoughts  to  make  out  that  Carlyle  was  a  sort  of 
ploughman-despot,  and  his  wife  an  unwilling  and  resentful 
slave,  that  we  must  proceed  first  to  find  foundations  for  the 
house,  of  which  we  know  more  in  all  its  details  than  perhaps 
of  any  house  that  has  been  built  and  furnished  in  this  cen- 
tury. Was  it  founded  on  the  rock  of  love  and  true  union, 
or  was  it  a  mere  four  walls,  no  home  at  all,  in  which  the 
rude  master  made  his  thrall  labour  for  him,  and  crushed  her 
delicate  nature  in  return  ?  " 

Mrs.  Oliphant  supplies  the  answer  to  that  question  out  of 
Mrs.  Carlyle's  own  mouth,  and  shows  from  her  letters  how 
cruelly  and  egregiously  Froude  has  erred  in  dealing  with  her 
relations  with  her  husband.  Touching  on  the  submission  of 
Mrs.  Carlyle's  private  Journal  to  Miss  Jewsbury  by  Froude, 
for  the  elucidation  of  its  dark  passages,  Mrs.  Oliphant  says : — 

"  So  Geraldine,  in  a  piece  of  fine  writing — words  as  untrue 
as  ever  words  were,  as  every  unprejudiced  reader  of  this 
book  will  see  for  himself,  and  entirely  contrary  to  that  kind 
soul's  ordinary  testimony.  Not  a  critic,  so  far  as  we  are 
aware,  has  ever  suggested  that  this  proceeding  was  unjusti- 
fiable or  outside  of  the  limits  of  honour.  Is  it  then  permis- 
sible to  outrage  the  memory  of  a  wife,  and  betray  her  secrets 
because  one  has  received  as  a  gift  her  husband's  papers  ? 
She  gave  no  permission,  left  no  authority  for  such  a  proceed- 
ing. Does  the  disability  of  women  go  as  far  as  this }  or  is 
there  no  need  for  honour  in  respect  to  the  dead?  'There 
ought  to  be  mystery  about  Carlyle,'  says  Mr.  Froude.  No, 
poor,  foolish,  fond  old  man !  there  is  no  mystery  about  him 
henceforward,  thanks  to  his  own  distracted  babble  of  genius, 
first  of  all.  But  how  about  his  wife  ?  Did  she  authorise 
Mr.  Froude  to  unveil  her  most  secret  thoughts,  her  darkest 
hours  of  weakness,  which  even  her  husband  passed  reverently 
over  ?  No  woman  of  this  generation,  or  of  any  other  we  are 
acquainted  with,  has  had  such  desperate  occasion  to  be  saved 
from  her  friends:  and  public  feeling  and  sense  of  honour 
must  be  at  a  low  ebb  indeed  when  no  one  ventures  to  stand 
up  and  to  stigmatize  as  it  deserves  this  betrayal  and  exposure 

i8i 


APPENDIX 

of  the  secret  of  a  woman's  weakness,  a  secret  which  throws 
no  Hght  upon  anything,  which  does  not  add  to  our  knowledge 
either  of  her  character  or  her  husband's,  and  with  which  the 
pubhc  had  nothing  whatever  to  do ! " 

Would  that  Mrs.  Oliphant  were  with  us  again — to  write 
as  she  once  did  a  whole  number  of  Maga,  and  to  stigmatize 
as  they  deserve  the  betrayals — far  deeper  than  those  which 
she  has  so  vigorously  condemned,  which  Froude,  being  dead, 
yet  speaking,  has  perpetuated  in  "My  Relations  with 
Carlyle  " ! 


182 


NEW   LETTERS   OF   JANE   WELSH   CARLYLE 

A  Collection  of  hitherto  Unpublished  Letters,  annotated  by  Thomas  Carlyle, 
and  edited  by  Alexander  Carlyle.  With  an  Introduction  by  Sir  James 
Crichton  Browne,  F.R.S.  With  numerous  illustrations  in  lithography  by 
T.  R.  Way  and  photogravures  and  portraits  from  hitherto  unreproduced 
originals.     In  two  volumes,  8vo.     Boxed.    $6.00  net. 

Uniform  with  "  New  Letters  of  Thomas  Carlyle." 

Some  Critical  Opinions: 

Mr.  Percy  Favor  Bicknell  in  The  Dial  says : — "  A  fresh  instalment 
of  these  piquant  letters  will  be  warmly  welcomed  by  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle's  admirers.  Mrs.  Carlyle's  vein  is  already  familiar  to  tlie 
reading  public,  and  she  is  as  bright  and  entertaining  here  as  in 
the  earlier-published  correspondence.  Mrs.  Carlyle's  correspond- 
ence, as  annotated  by  a  husband's  loving  hand,  is  a  most  charm- 
ing and  impressive  work  of  literature.  The  present  editor  has 
done  his  work  so  wisely  and  so  well.  A  service  has  been  ren- 
dered to  the  cause  of  truth  and  a  pious  tribute  paid  to  the  memory 
of  two  suffering  souls  by  the  publication  of  these  letters.  The 
two  volumes  are  of  excellent  workmanship,  the  clear  type  and 
finely  executed  portraits  being  a  delight  to  the  eye." 

Mr.  James  Whitcottib  Riley  says  : — "A  most  valuable  work,  supply- 
ing as  it  does  the  real  (though  indirect)  history  and  personality  of 
a  character  as  generally  loved  for  her  womanly  graces  as  admired 
for  her  brilliant  gifts  of  mind.  Accept  my  congratulations  upon 
your  giving  to  the  book-world  such  a  treasure." 

The  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser : — "Clever  in  the  extreme, 
sparkling  with  wit  and  glowing  with  fine  humor.  They  reveal  at 
once  the  intellectual  woman,  sharpened  and  polished  by  intimate 
association  with  the  best  minds  of  England,  and  the  tender,  de- 
voted, sympathetic  wife  and  helpmate.  They  have  a  delightful 
piquancy  of  flavor." 

The  New  York  Times  Saturday  Review : — "  Varied  and  entertaining, 
'The  New  Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  '  will  be 
widely  read  and  discussed." 

The  Washington  Titnes : — "The  work  has  been  carefully  done,  and 
the  book  should  be  one  of  the  features  of  the 'Carlyle  revival' 
which  is  predicted  for  the  near  future." 

The  Chicago  Record-Herald : — "  These  volumes  bear  new  and  charm- 
ing evidence  of  the  brilliant  intellectuality  and  sterling  character 
of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle." 

The  Cleveland  Leader: — "These  letters  are  extremely  pleasant  to 
read  from  their  native  charm." 

The  Detroit  Tribune  :—"  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  an  acute  observer  of  the 
times  and  events  in  which  she  lived,  and  her  letters  are  delight- 
fully chatty  and  entertaining." 


■V  ,11111  III  If 

^A    000  598  770    6 


